Return To Entropia - an update from a previous player

Dobbin

 On seeing many new posts here, and being a player in the past ,I decided to revisit Entropia and get the lowdown on whats happening within the world. These are my findings which I will try to keep as truthful and unbiased as possible.....

  On arriving once again at Port Atlantis  after a fair time away  I was rather surprised to be greeted by a Mindark Guide, and I have got to say this is a good move. He seemed polite,  and took me through the basics of movement, what I could do for free, and general advice that I found quite useful. However this was marred somewhat by bored players who were trying to aid the guides, but were just succeeding in confusing new players with their interference IMO. Still...... good start to my reborn existence...

 With the guides advice done with I took my first steps into the world, hounded by one of said "helpful" players asking me "do i need a mentor" - now being an ex player I am quite aware that Mentor "farming" is quite a lucrative business and so after telling him I wasn't gonna deposit he quickly lost all interest. OK now farmer boy is out the way time to try and sweat....... geeez it's hard now, I get hit lots, check my stats.... WTF... all stats are now set at 1 Agility etc - they used to start at 20......

 First impressions are that graphically no great earthshattering improvements, however deaths now look cool I got to admit. When you die you flop over like a ragdoll, much better than the old style deaths.

 Lag in Port Atlantis is noticeably better now than i seem to remember it being in past times, not good as lag still occurs but no where near the unplayable lag that once existed in this lag pit.

Stage 2 - Undercover Noob

 Ok now to check the market, sweat has plummetted in price since my last time here - when i stopped playing maybe 6 months ago 1.0 pec a bottle now ......... 0.5-0.6 pec per bottle. So along with the lower starting attributes, and lower price of sweat things for a non depositor are much tougher now, also talking to noobs who had ventured out to hunt talk was of returns of below 50% as a rule for starting characters, some reports of less than 20% return..... This is indeed much lower than I experienced as a starting player 2 years ago.

Stage 3 - Relog as old Avatar

 After a few hours as a noob, I decided to log on as my old avatar and talk to a few of my old friendslist, after all I have only been gone for around 6 months most will still be there.......

 I was truly shocked to find that out of a full friendslist only 4 remained, this was over a week of loggng on to chat and catch up with old faces. The 4 remaining players went on to tell me about current  feelings within the community which I will relay to you all as seperate points below - 3 of the four are currently considering leaving or as it's known "selling out" - the final guy is staying to see what happens but is also currently not happy with current changes to the game. All came up with the following....

1 - Recent changes to the skill system has made it much harder and more expensive to progress beyond 5k skill, this is known as the "skill nerf". A slowdown occurs after 5k skill which slows more the higher the skill go's making progress 10 times harder, longer to attain, and more expense to get to "Uber" status.

2- New loot distribution system - The new loot system has made the game less reliant on skills, now unless you obtain a "global" hunting you will be in loss. General loot has been lowered and bigger loots have been increased meaning the game is no more about hunting, mining, efficiently - it is more about luck now than skills. Bigger creatures in the past were known as "always looters" - so with skills and equipment you could be fairly  sure of a reasonable return...... this is no longer true.

3- Lack of interesting loot - All reported that they seem now to loot less items each VU (Version Update) - by items i am speaking of armour and other ready to use items. They all reported now recieving more animal oils and crafting ingrediants especially those geared towards the "Limited" or unrepairable crafted items which the economy seems to be moving towards.

4- Market Monopolies - two of the people currently leaving the game were especially concerned about big resellers controlling markets within the system. These people are buying all of one or a few of the catagories within the auction system and relisting the items for profit, so affecting prices on PEauction, and mytwopecs which are the guides for buyers of goods within the game. One of the main area's affected is that of esi (empty skill implant) which you need to sell skills to leave the game - meaning tht much of the value of their skills are going to be eaten away by the cost to chip them out. They also said that it seems the droprate for the esi has been reduced, so further causing crazy prices for these essential items to leave the game.

 Now I have to say improvements to lag issues have taken place, also it seems that Mindark have straightened out the problems they had with the Physics engine. Graphically still behind the times somewhat but better than I remember, I think new shading and lighting effects but on the whole nothing spectacular.  This game was hard when I was first playing, but now it is way way harder for a new player, due to both the starting attributes now being much lower along with the decrease in the price of sweat.

 All this being said EU can be a very enjoyable experience, however be warned it can also be an insanely expensive one. I for one found the game to be getting more expensive by the month, and it seems this trend continues. My best advice for anyone tempted to play this is to sweat for s long as you can before depositing, better evade , agility, combat reflex, courage will mean less armour repairs, and misses with your gun when you use them. Also set a budget on depositing and stick to it,  this game can suck cash faster than saying "Wherethefuckdidallmypedsgo".

 This isn't a fanboy post but I have tried to be as straight as i can to potential new players......

Dobbin