Discussion What Would Make You Stay? What Suggests That Server Is Dying?

[Epiquin]

I think these are important questions.

 

People frequently give some abstract/vague reason as to why they don't start playing, ex. "nothing unique". 

 

But what makes you stay?

Community?

Relaxed atmosphere?

 

Or a lot of moment-to-moment action?

and many opportunities? (trade, scam, steal, political opportunities)

 

When do you assume the server is dying and why? For ex. in InfiniteL2 I noticed a trend that server needed to wipe a lot - players started to notice when someone has high grade gear and prevents everyone else from getting there (by killing them, obviously), so they stop playing and wait for a wipe.

[ZaNteR]

The point of playing l2 was that you could be "someone" in a server. I remember there were famous people and clans and rumours and all that fun stuff the gave an liveliness to a server.

Now a lot of things are skipped. People go straight to end game and then they do oly?

 

Imo Oly is the worst thing that happened to l2 it killed PVP because why to go in a farming spot and look for players to kill when you can safely do 1vs1 and think you did something meaningfull?

 

Also i remember clans would not allow certain areas with good xp and drops to be accesible by common players. Then common players would team up and try to get that place for their own and stuff like that. Having a castle was an achievement, now its one of these things like having a pet dragon i guess.

 

Lastly the exitement of outrunning people that wanted to kill you is something i miss.

 

The above are the things that would make me stay on  a server.

 

I wasted 4 years trying to recreate these conditions but the players did not take the message.

 

As long as admins treat the game as a bussiness and the community/herd is following that toxic gameplay those people provide with hand helding and wipes every other month theres no hope saving this game.

 

Times have changed and its time to move on to another game or go on with your real life or something.

Edited October 28, 2015 by ZaNteR

[Epiquin]

I want to agree about the farmzones, but I think it was slightly more motivated than simply arbitrarily forcing people out.

 

L2 map is big, but areas for particular level brackets are limited, as well as certain drops are limited to certain areas. So clans, in order to further their own agendas tried to rid of randoms getting in their way. 

 

But now, if you open a server, the player density is so low that there is no real need to fight over farm spots. I'm taking a huge leap in logic, but I think most victims just think its lame when someone tries to force them out of a farmzone, because there are no principles that warrant that kind of behaviour. In the former case - you could bargain and negotiate with "landowners", say you will leave, or just generally get the "hint", and like you say, either take matters into your own hands, or just live and learn from the experience.

 

Now, it's not really about owning and securing a farmspot - it's just about causing pain for the victim. Personally it doesn't bother me, I've been playing EVE for so long that griefing is pretty trivial to me. But I can see how someone who is more casual is likely to just get frustrated.

 

I can agree that there need to be more game changing mechanics that let people tamper with the gameworld, creating those memorable moments. 

[*real*savormix]

Well, I guess the thing that keeps me is the fact that I am playing on an official server for my region. No matter how poorly maintained, no matter with how small a skeleton crew, no matter the incomplete/buggy releases, the monster lags inflicted randomly to individual characters (e.g. if you 6-box, one char will suddenly start having 10s+ delay to all actions, but all others (including newly boxed) will see no lag at all) and incompetent administrators (we wish we could make another 2 weeks of free teleports, but we don't know how!), there's this certain thing that you can play here and whenever you come back, you will have all your (now worthless) gear, forcibly removed skill enchants or skills altogether, will be seeing mostly the same players and can have new fun just like the old times.

 

Also, did I mention invisible (one-way) walls in towns that nobody cares fixing since Freya, at least?

 

And I still keep playing.

Edited October 29, 2015 by _dev_

[Epiquin]

Well, I guess the thing that keeps me is the fact that I am playing on an official server for my region. No matter how poorly maintained, no matter with how small a skeleton crew, no matter the incomplete/buggy releases, the monster lags inflicted randomly to individual characters (e.g. if you 6-box, one char will suddenly start having 10s+ delay to all actions, but all others (including newly boxed) will see no lag at all) and incompetent administrators (we wish we could make another 2 weeks of free teleports, but we don't know how!), there's this certain thing that you can play here and whenever you come back, you will have all your (now worthless) gear, forcibly removed skill enchants or skills altogether, will be seeing mostly the same players and can have new fun just like the old times.

 

Also, did I mention invisible (one-way) walls in towns that nobody cares fixing since Freya, at least?

 

And I still keep playing.

Sounds like you are just very tenacious and tolerant. 

[GhostBuster-*]

4 things make me stay. 1st community 300+in a high rate server or 800+ for mids.2nd thing corruptions and op donations ruin the game in every server so this must change if you want stable community,3d anti-bots for sure cause everyone nowadays leave a bot on and he drinks coffee,and 4th just keep a server online for a long not a week or month...But seems like that's just a dream nowadays no server with these 4 i mentioned exist....

[*real*savormix]

4 things make me stay. 1st community 300+in a high rate server or 800+ for mids.2nd thing corruptions and op donations ruin the game in every server so this must change if you want stable community,3d anti-bots for sure cause everyone nowadays leave a bot on and he drinks coffee,and 4th just keep a server online for a long not a week or month...But seems like that's just a dream nowadays no server with these 4 i mentioned exist....

A large community + a true working antibot = an empty server. You will be surprised how many people are discouraged from starting/continuing to play on a bot-free server. And once they start leaving, real players notice that the server is losing players fast, so they simply follow the trend. Rats are the first to leave a sinking boat. And there is no better metaphor to describe both botters and a server with a working anti-bot. This has been tested and not only by me personally. As I may have already pointed out, the whole deal is about making the server appear to have a strict anti-bot policy and that it would be really hard for a first time botter to get started with botting on the server, while at the same time making sure that anyone with at least a few months of botting experience would have literally zero trouble on starting to bot.

It also helps to keep regular announcements about what punishment awaits botters, as well as publish some info about punishments taken against them. If they are real or partly fabricated, it doesn't really matter.

[GhostBuster-*]

A large community + a true working antibot = an empty server. You will be surprised how many people are discouraged from starting/continuing to play on a bot-free server. And once they start leaving, real players notice that the server is losing players fast, so they simply follow the trend. Rats are the first to leave a sinking boat. And there is no better metaphor to describe both botters and a server with a working anti-bot. This has been tested and not only by me personally. As I may have already pointed out, the whole deal is about making the server appear to have a strict anti-bot policy and that it would be really hard for a first time botter to get started with botting on the server, while at the same time making sure that anyone with at least a few months of botting experience would have literally zero trouble on starting to bot.

It also helps to keep regular announcements about what punishment awaits botters, as well as publish some info about punishments taken against them. If they are real or partly fabricated, it doesn't really matter.

For sure botting servers have bigger communitites due to this like you mention,but i would like to play with real players.I agree on this too,but real players/clans farming/pvping are better than botting communitites that hits mobs all time and after they leave server.

[Yato]

Hm, a simple way would be forcing a player to team up, and ofc raid.

 

Story time:

When i was playing lineage i was i think part of that first new(there was an old one too ofc)  anti social generation of players where you would want to solo everything and just mindlessly farm.. sad days. But at a certain point i couldnt do it anymore, i couldnt solo i needed raids and normal mobs wouldnt give me too much of reward. And then me joining a clan was a big step cause new things were unfolding, i had to greet ppl, ppl had to interact with me i made friends we would party and keep tabs on raids at that point of the server every clan had a hall, so the ones we could get would be the conquerable ones, and we had to fight in a 20 v 20 v 40 v 50 at times battles, you had a penalty if you died ofc, no one wanted to lose heard earned xp, so you had to keep staying alive even tho if that meant running away and having to deal with the shame; the thing was you had to play smart and dont die fast, you had to keep tabs on things.

 

Anyhoo.. im not seeing this anymore.. im seeing servers with "revolutionary ideas" like new classes bull shit events and what not, these ppl i dont even think they played this game before.. ever, and ofc it all sums up to donations for a cheaply hosted server, atm you can get a 20$ vps and run a decent interlude server with acis or some shit. Ohh please help the server with 100eu donation while my mother pays for my bullshit server, damn millennials.

 

What i'd like to see, dont give out handouts dont make it too easy but not too stupidly hard, no one is gonna play old retail like, well only hard cores but only for a while dont build a server just for 10 ppl. Force them to interact, reward them for it, reward clans, build communitys. Another thing i hate is GMs that are too friendly or GMs that know of an issue and dont do anything about it or avoid ppl just so they dont have to deal with the issue OR DON'T ADMIT THEY ARE IN THE WRONG, or they cant fix it.

 

Sorry for the end rant there.

 

PS: Aw i played on a low rate a few months back, i was surprised how huge but empty some clans can be, they recruit.. and nothing after. Soulless.

Edited November 17, 2015 by Yato

[krepst]

Well depends. Are you asking about pvp or low gameplay?

The low rates games is quite fine and you can keep the community for longer time. But at the end we will still gonna have the same problem with pvp and low rates gameplays.

Difference between new player and fully geared.

Newcomer never gonna try to conquer the old server where the most of players are geared up and stuff. In this case newcomer leave the server. And result of that, old players after some "fun" time see no intrest of continue playing where he sees no challange.

My opinion would be to make just small difference between gears stats or even players stats, result of that would be that newcomer doesnt feel so much difference between old players.

That would maintain newcomers and keep the challanges for old players.

 

By making it work like that , second step would be to make some personal skills things.

I mean gear wouldnt count almost nothing.

It would count how you played in that situation.

Some things could be taken from others rpg games like removing targets stuff. To make like counterstrike cross so players which are casting skill he would control the cross and he cast skill on where cross points.

 

Well we can disscuss about this for hours.

But we have no such resources to make it happen.

 

Sorry for shitty sentence,writing from phone..