|
Har Fairweather
Registered User
Join date: 24 Jan 2007
Posts: 2,320
|
07-27-2007 13:03
From: Finora Kuncoro I played Entropia when it was in it's vastly elongated Beta. I still log in from time to time to see what is happening.
I'd say Entropia really needs a graphics upgrade. The avatars for example look a tiny bit better then newbie SL avatars, but that is as far as it goes. You can't improve them all that much due to the fact that most content is controlled by Mindark. No uploading custom textures or buying photo realistic skins/prim hair here.
So given the lack of customization, they really need to be able to offer something better right out of the box.
As as others have commented Entropia is a money sink for the vast majority of people. Indeed one of the comments from Beta is that playing in Entropia is a bit like putting money in a slot machine.
You hunt critters or mine the ground to get items of value. The items required to do this cost money and wear out or are consumed in the process. What you get back in item value is at least in part based on random chance (Although Mindark refuse to reveal the way payouts are determined). This makes Entropia in effect one big casino.
Given all the posts on the banning of gambling in SL, has anyone given any thought as to what would happen to the Entropia business model if the same were to happen there ? Gee, that could have killled gambling without the ban. |
|
Darius Dionne
Registered User
Join date: 1 Aug 2006
Posts: 18
|
07-27-2007 14:54
I agree with some of the criticism against Entropia. I think it already has better graphics than SL though (except maybe avatars). Yep, I think ordinary player created content always has to go trough the game company, but there are player owned territories for example, which I think legally states it's the owners property rather than MindArk, so lets be balanced in this criticism.
Why do you think Anshee Chung invested so much money in Entropia?
....anyway, the point of the thread was not to tell people about Entropias current status, most people probably knew this game existed since it's labelled the only SL competitor by the press because the game currency is tied to the US dollar.
The point was that they had made a deal with Cryengine which is the best graphics engine out there to upgrade Entropia... so even if it looks nice now, better than SL, it will probably be the best looking online game when the upgrade is finished.
SL should know they have competitors and people might leave if they do not shape up.
I would prefer if SL just became atleast semi stable. Ordinary people might stand some of the lag but when they realize for example that their avatars often looks bugged to others, many just give up and go to one of these other games, Entropia being the only one with a RL economy.
I mean come on, you keep going with this ancient graphics engine which Linden developers have said publically that it can not "scale" meaning it can never be succesful.
I just don't understand Linden Labs strategy to be honest..... Surely everyone can agree that a platform that is so buggy and laggy can never be a mainstream platform. As I said before, the average consumer could not care less about scripting or building. They might care about socializing and designing their avatar though.
But hey, if you want SL to be a betaplatform for developers why feed this hype.
|
|
Luve Schack
.:ShoeAholic:.
Join date: 30 Oct 2006
Posts: 84
|
07-27-2007 18:44
I "played" EU and it's the suck. It felt way more like work than play ever has (or should).
By the way "Sweating" animals only lasts so long -- but its so boring and mind numbing it seems like forever. Its the worst grind ever for the least payoff ever.
For those who aren't familiar with "sweating". Imagine if every camper in SL was chasing down the SAME "Camp Spot" that had a very small amount of cash they could suck out of it until it ran out -----but that it could kill them in a blow, run out of range in a moments notice or lure them into a pack of ruh-roh-I'm-deads, and a more powerful player could fell it with a single blow of a mediocre weapon to grief you so you got nothing, or worse yet "train" it onto you so you die your items take damage then kill it so you get nothing. After all that, IF you manage to scrape enough together, you get to haggle in the marketplace. Yippeee!
Like pretty scenery? Hope you can see it from a town ..because packs of alien flowers/animals/pond slime roam the landscape and eat your face off before you can see much. Also, travel is/was the most boring thing ever - miles of nothing punctuated by a few bits of "ahhhhh" then more nothing.
People are loathe to help each other because everything is expensive and only a small percentage can bear it past an hour or two. So no one wants to waste stuff on a newbie. You can't blame them as hard as it is to get, really.
I'm very experienced in MMORPGs fighting/questing etc, and I got wasted so many times in one hour that only dogged idiotic determination made me endure several more. I gave it a good chance. My reward? I felt like I'd been mugged, and relieved of much of my precious time and limited sanity.
No thanks. YMMV.
|
|
Kornscope Komachi
Transitional human
Join date: 30 Aug 2006
Posts: 1,041
|
07-27-2007 19:57
I have checked EU's website out and baulked at the GB download.
This is why EU looks and probably plays better. Lots of static content already on disk. Whereas SL's content changes as to where you are on the grid. (Downloading new objects and textures constantly.)
I've seen a couple of doco's involving EU and ALWAYS has the dude called Neverdie. He bought the Asteroid, Mindark built him a club and Neverdie makes the dough by leasing stores, houses and about everything else.
If you can make a chair, you don't rez new ones from that. It's sold and you purchase raw materials to make another to sell. so in that respect, it's much closer to RL than SL.
_____________________
SCOPE Homes, Bangu
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|