05-25-2010, 07:00 PM
The reason I usually avoid these threads is because they very rarely introduce anything new. After reading through this one, I have a case in point.
(read the next part in Yahtzee Croshaw's voice)
Give people what they want.
Everyone wants different things, and there's no way for everyone to have everything.
Change skillgain
Plenty of people are GM in all skills with nothing more than turning on a macro while wanking about somewhere else. It's not hard, and to make skills drastically more easy devalues the work the existing players put in.
Changes to crafting
Sure it gives a temporary boost to interest, but after hours of scripting a few new hues onto your jock strap or a cool pair of dealy-boppers, it's only new and interesting for so long before people lose interest. Not to mention stacking more and more tools on to the already huge assortment you need.
People want it to be like it used to be.
Sounds great till you realize the source of the shard's population merges from two drastically different playstyles. What we have now is a very good melding of both styles and aside from the occasional bug fix or balancing, changing it is just like constantly adjusting a picture-frame on a window trying to level it. Someone's always going to think it's crooked.
Remove/Don't Remove the pits
For a bustling shard of hundreds, the pits would become crowded and mostly unusable for anything but tourney meetups. You'll meet plenty of people in towns as well, so there's no need to go. With smaller populations, the people in the pits give an appearance of population, even if there's not one active at the time. Point is, it serves a purpose when the population is low and it's needed, but when the population gets high, it becomes less valuable de facto.
Status Page
This one I don't even want to touch on, because it is inherently flawed. I personally don't like it because it's unrealistic and instead of gameplay, you're pressing F5 on your browser, then recalling to look for the person you think you can find and kill. Sure it boosts PVP activity, but at the cost of PVEers griping about being hunted, then the PVPers saying how hard it is to find someone even with their area. Bottom line is, NOONE will ever be happy with the status page, so there's no point in proposing ways to fix it.
OKAY ERU! You just blasted all our ideas, so if you're so smart, YOU fix it.
Short answer is, I don't know how, but I can guess. Longer answer to follow:
We seem to have NO problem at all retaining people who have devoted themselves to the shard and have managed to make it through the skill-up process and learning to hunt.
The people we seem to lose are the new players, so THOSE are the people we should be listening to the most instead of rearranging bits that only 10% of the peak players ever see.
I remember when I started here, there were very few easy dungeons. I'd recommend just making pitifully easy dungeons full of mongbats and headlesses, weakened zombies, etc. The loot would be terrible, but there's a lot to say for being able to log into a game and start killing the shit out of things right off the bat.
More automated events that players can happen in on. Ideally there would be dozens of these, with each reoccurring every 1-2 weeks. This would give a fairly constant mix of events going on that draw in players and give a sense of storyline, which brings me to my next point:
Lore and storyline. We have no notable kings, heroes, places, or quests. It would be nice to have a bit of lore behind things that are integrated via XML dialogues, spawners, etc.
To sum up what I think needs to happen: IMMERSION
(read the next part in Yahtzee Croshaw's voice)
Give people what they want.
Everyone wants different things, and there's no way for everyone to have everything.
Change skillgain
Plenty of people are GM in all skills with nothing more than turning on a macro while wanking about somewhere else. It's not hard, and to make skills drastically more easy devalues the work the existing players put in.
Changes to crafting
Sure it gives a temporary boost to interest, but after hours of scripting a few new hues onto your jock strap or a cool pair of dealy-boppers, it's only new and interesting for so long before people lose interest. Not to mention stacking more and more tools on to the already huge assortment you need.
People want it to be like it used to be.
Sounds great till you realize the source of the shard's population merges from two drastically different playstyles. What we have now is a very good melding of both styles and aside from the occasional bug fix or balancing, changing it is just like constantly adjusting a picture-frame on a window trying to level it. Someone's always going to think it's crooked.
Remove/Don't Remove the pits
For a bustling shard of hundreds, the pits would become crowded and mostly unusable for anything but tourney meetups. You'll meet plenty of people in towns as well, so there's no need to go. With smaller populations, the people in the pits give an appearance of population, even if there's not one active at the time. Point is, it serves a purpose when the population is low and it's needed, but when the population gets high, it becomes less valuable de facto.
Status Page
This one I don't even want to touch on, because it is inherently flawed. I personally don't like it because it's unrealistic and instead of gameplay, you're pressing F5 on your browser, then recalling to look for the person you think you can find and kill. Sure it boosts PVP activity, but at the cost of PVEers griping about being hunted, then the PVPers saying how hard it is to find someone even with their area. Bottom line is, NOONE will ever be happy with the status page, so there's no point in proposing ways to fix it.
OKAY ERU! You just blasted all our ideas, so if you're so smart, YOU fix it.
Short answer is, I don't know how, but I can guess. Longer answer to follow:
We seem to have NO problem at all retaining people who have devoted themselves to the shard and have managed to make it through the skill-up process and learning to hunt.
The people we seem to lose are the new players, so THOSE are the people we should be listening to the most instead of rearranging bits that only 10% of the peak players ever see.
I remember when I started here, there were very few easy dungeons. I'd recommend just making pitifully easy dungeons full of mongbats and headlesses, weakened zombies, etc. The loot would be terrible, but there's a lot to say for being able to log into a game and start killing the shit out of things right off the bat.
More automated events that players can happen in on. Ideally there would be dozens of these, with each reoccurring every 1-2 weeks. This would give a fairly constant mix of events going on that draw in players and give a sense of storyline, which brings me to my next point:
Lore and storyline. We have no notable kings, heroes, places, or quests. It would be nice to have a bit of lore behind things that are integrated via XML dialogues, spawners, etc.
To sum up what I think needs to happen: IMMERSION