A Newcomer's (Noobie) Opinion of Cyrene

Hello all. First off let me state that all of this is just my opinion from my extremely limited time in this game and even less time on Cyrene.

My Story
I was created on 8/20/16 on Planet Arkadia. My ex played this game quite a bit so I had the benefit of her expertise (we are still on pretty good terms) and I told her what I tend to like out of games and she directed me where to go and how to get off to a good start.
I wanted to be a crafter so I got a mentor right away and before killing a single mob I set out on a mothership for a while to unlock Blueprint Comprehension to get me started. I went back to Ark, bought a few QR 100 bps, a few K ped in materials and got to crafting. It was fun but after a short time, I wanted to explore the universe a bit. I landed at RT and was immediately welcomed by the community and had a blast shooting fembots but it was missing something.

I wanted to find a place to make a home and settle down for the most part. My ex was very fond of Cyrene and mentioned a few people that were natives here as being huge helps to her in her Entropia life so I figured I'd give it a shot. Here goes...

The Land

I work a white collar job with lots of downtime so I can spend a lot of time looking at stuff on the internet at work. Before coming here I looked up pictures and posts and everything in the pictures looked beautiful. Then I got here. The overwhelming majority of the terrain is the exact same and looks like basic dirt blocks from Minecraft. Unless I'm on my laptop I play on the highest graphics settings in fullscreen. The exception to this is the desert area with the Duster people with the constant windstorm going on. That looks cool. The pictures I saw depicted ancient Roman architecture and purple, wasp infested swamps. It was very exotic. The reality was different.

The night cycle is insanely dark. I can barely see anything.

Plus there is the fact that everything is on tiny, little islands, all crammed together, and packed full of mobs so exploring is difficult (and I can't imagine how hard it is on full time miners).

From what I understand this is beta but the terrain for me is off putting and ugly but more importantly, boring.

My biggest complaint here is the Mazeweavers.....You mean to tell me that trans dimensional beings, capable of transporting massive mazes through space with advanced technology can't come up with cooler architecture than texture less, white walls?

The Mobs

As far as I can tell, we've got some pretty unique, cool looking mobs here. I really don't have any complaints here as far as the look of the mobs with the exception of the Puny Tree Dragon. It's huge..like 3x bigger than any other Tree Dragons.

The AI of the mobs here, however seems to be set to hyperdrive. They move around far more than any other planet I've seen and maybe it's just me and people have told me it's connection issues but I seem to have this issue where the mob aggros on me and moves to attack in melee range....then it slowly backs away and my ava follows it as it goes....then it slingshots back to where it was standing. This makes melee hunting nearly impossible. Again, I have to mention that this is the only planet I've visited where I seem to have this problem.

I'm fine with the bug-type mobs having this swarmlike AI and moving constantly but or the rest it's a little irritating and makes it very hard to hunt near any other hunters since your mobs will often cross or aggro on somebody else.

I'd make the suggestion to change all the maturities of the mobs to the Alpha-Omega typing instead of using young/old/stalker type to make them seem more exotic as well as capture that Roman theme.

The Crafts

As mentioned, I wanted to be a crafter at character creation. There seems to be enough blueprints to keep a newbie busy here with the dailies and some of the components needed for them. There's also the UL small Ozpyn weapons which are a pretty big hit.

That said....overall...the BPs are pretty muffed up here. The TT values on most of the L stuff is waaaay too high and the materials don't seem to drop in any ratio at all similar to how often they are used (Basic Targeting Chip anyone?). As a result, the overwhelming majority of the planet specific loot is TT food (again..anecdotal). The mining ores and enmatters seem to be fine. I needed Yellow Crystal, for example, and had no difficulty finding it (special thanks to Haruto Rat for the Mining Maps).

I'm a noobie but I think that a lot of the blueprints as well as their end product need looked at to make crafting more viable here beyond just a very basic level with bonding liquid Cubes (an iffy one), or Chons, and s1x1s.

The People

The people of Cyrene have been very strange for me. They're sort of like my extremely bipolar ex. One day they welcome you with open arms and the next they want to hang you up by your toes and skin you alive. It's like tossing a coin to see which Cyrene chat you're gonna get.

Day one everyone is super nice, and polite. There's random chats, lots of gratz, and an occasional gripe about loot.

Day Two everyone wants to murder your whole family for advertising your loots in the "wrong" chat instead of using one of the 42 Cyrene trades that nobody uses.

Some days it's so toxic I just shut close it instead of looking at it.

The forum doesn't seem much better.

Support

I've seen numerous complaints about Entropia support in general. I'm talking about planet specific staff. I was on Arkadia for a whole minute before I was greeted by a friendly Arkadia staff. On RT I was greeted by Neverdie within a few days.
I've not seen anyone from Cyrene in chat at all. The only thing I've seen is on the Forums and that seems to be a whole bunch of empty promises and politician-like posts that don't really say anything at all. I can see why so many Cyrene citizens are frustrated, though I haven't experienced any of it myself.

Missions

For me, this is where Cyrene really shines. As I mentioned...I had no interest whatsoever in anything other than crafting. The missions on Cyrene drew me in and made me want to hunt.

It seems a lot of the missions are bugged or broken but since I'm a noobie and not yet out several thousand peds to get a promised reward that doesn't work...I'm still ok with them and have plenty to do. I also really like that the majority of the missions are given by unique NPC's rather than at a terminal. The fact that they are mostly in one place makes it better so we don't have to search for them (for the most part).

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the way dynamic map concept. Probably my favorite part. Feeling that you can impact the overall world is pretty cool.

The Gear
The gear looks cool. I love the armors and melee weapons. Not a huge fan of the ranged weapons but, meh. I specifically hate the Ozpyn BP s1x1 and the BLP pistols from loot. They just look.....nubby. Like part of the gun is simply missing.

Overall

I'm drawn in to Cyrene though I'm not sold on it yet. It's 90% the missions that drew me in. There are more unique and special than how most other planets have simple Iron Missions.

I've read that this is only the beta...that said it's seems to really go out of it's way to push people away with broken promises or lack of content with new updates. It appears more like an Alpha than a beta.

Hopefully, this doesn't offend anyone. I really hope Cyrene ends up being my EU home. I really believe it has a lot of promise but it needs a LOT of work to join the universe at large.

 

Welcome on the Universe and especially on Cyrene

 

Thank you Justine. Hope to see you in my travels

 

welcome to cyrene It is a great place if you can hook up with the right ppl if i see you in chat i will send you a FR cheers

 

good post, thx for it

 

"I've read that this is only the beta...that said it's seems to really go out of it's way to push people away with broken promises or lack of content with new updates."

A great post there, but it unfortunately mentions lots of 'truths' that apparently even noobies can see - and it has been like this for literally years! The loss of the Roman architecture and purple, wasp infested swamps came when Cyrene was made smaller (from I think 3 server areas to 1). I'm not even sure anymore when that move happened tbh, but it is no longer what one could call recently.

As far as I can tell, Cyrene wanted to launch fully with the introduction of mechanoid fighting 'vehicles', but MA has had ongoing problems of one sort or another, maybe graphics, maybe balancing skills and strength etc etc. However, Cyrene still seems to be holding out for this (and possibly other) change(s).

Anyone holding their breath would be more than blue by now, though. Something MA actively promised was space transport missions, with rewards paid for from revenue from planetary transfers via the auction house. They got as far as introducing crates of stuff (which cannot be looted by pirates if they kill you in space), and were still saying the system would come 'soon', while happily taking peds from the auction house deliveries already. This was pretty much two years ago now, and since then.... nothing!
[This shows that MA does not even do/conclude its own stuff, let alone other platform stuff that planet partners need for the gameplay they have planned]

I hope this is a fair and accurate summary of some of the problems behind the scenes.

In my opinion, the biggest problem which Cyrene needs to solve regardless of anything else is STILL the materials availablility for crafting (balancing) and the usefullness of the crafted results. In several areas items available on other planets have now improved over time, so possibly Cyrene needs to update itself via this option, but if old items are to be used in the upgrades then Cyrene must make sure that it is economic and possible to do so.

 

Thank you everyone. Since posting this, the community seems to have warmed considerably. I'm convinced that the majority of the toxic element are people who were/are just visiting because what I've seen so far from fairly well known Cyrene citizens is a lot more welcoming. I will do my best to continue to skill up and hopefully become a valuable member of the community.

 

Hi and welcome to Cyrene.
Note that #cyrene is mainly used for discussions, however advertising message every 2 hours would be OK.
If you are online now you can see a live example how the chat is abused by a guy spamming every 5 minutes.
The best way to get ignored is by over spam the channel.

 

To be clear, I haven't used chat to advertise selling at all. I did advertise to buy sweat once. I just saw some guy advertise that he was selling stuff in Cyrene chat and people jumped all over his case. He wasn't spamming. It was just chat police who wanted to force him to use Cyrene-trade, cyrenetrade, or one of the other similar ones instead.

 

<=== This particular toxic element will be back to Cyrene later this week.

Anyone who wants to peddle their crap in general discussion channels, or who is unhappy with me being back for other reasons, is welcome to state their full name so that we can ignore each other beforehand and avoid unproductive discussions.

 

I remember having asked about this specifically on one of my first visits to Cyrene, when I saw people advertising their wares in the general channel despite a trade channel existed, and having just come from Arkadia where there is a strict chat police. Got the reply that the community is so small it was pointless having to observe several channels, you wouldn't reach anyone and they didn't mind. Rocktropia also works this way, all go in one channel.

If it's a sign of growth that this has changed, then that's great. But culture not being the same everywhere, don't take it for granted. Repeat offenders get in my ignore list, too, but being acerbic to every newcomer who makes a mistake will turn your own potential business away.

 

Welcome to Planet Cyrene from me too, Brainiac!

Cyrene can be hard for a new player, alot of informations and mission that needs to be found, but if you spent some time here and dont leave as soon as you think its too hard the acomodation, you will love it and maybe consider it ''home'' as alot of us already did it

I am in one of the best societies ingame, Cyreans, and if you dont have a society already you are welcome to join us.

All the best and have a great time ingame.