PlaneShift
Gameplay => General Discussion => Topic started by: Vankseal Serozan on March 28, 2012, 03:08:09 pm
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Hello fellow players. I was just talking a guild mate last night and I was told that the devs are concerned about the steady decline of players. She also said they were looking for ideas to attract the old players back and/or keep new players from leaving. I would appreciate it if a dev/gm could confirm or deny this. If the dev team is interested I have some ideas that I would be more than willing to share that might help. I know I have complained a lot about some developments in the game but I really would hate to see it go, it shows so much potential and I have had many good laughs with friends that I would really miss if the game were to close. If wanted I will be more than happy to post any ideas I have.
Vaneal Serozen.
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Just send an email to the players who haven't logged in the last 2 years, telling them how cool we arenow, with quotes of current players and all.
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It is indeed true that we have a much smaller reliable player base now than compared to the times of version 0.3.x; but it is also true that a few people from those times, who once disappeared, reappear now (see the post by Stronith).
Reasons seem to be quite diverse (less unemployment; more hardware demands; lack of patience; vicious circle of disappointment = "small playerbase due to small playerbase"; specific disappointing reasons). Those who stay found their personal reason to do so.
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the best way, I think, to keep numbers up is retention of new players. The best way to do that? Engage your fellow player. The player community is the strongest aspect of the game, and the devs have nothing to do with it.
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I would say the problem is not what to do but actually having the resources to do it. However, in the event that there is actually uncertainty on what to do, here are my suggestions:
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I would suggest put a freeze on new features for awhile and work on old ones. If nothing else, stop adding things that can potentially make new bugs, more game play difficulties, etc... It doesn't matter if new features directly affect the old ones, more working parts will create new problems.
Work on establishing NPC back ups for traveling NPCs so that new players don't have to waste time tracking down the NPCs while learning the city.
Also, change it so that you can train and purchase more in hydlaa so that players aren't forced to be dispersed. The only way to compensate for dispersing players would be to create more NPCs to fill the areas where players are lacking so it doesn't feel empty. That presents other issues, so it is better to provide incentives for player to condense in an area. Players nowadays don't want to come into a ghost town, MMOs aren't novel anymore and a virtual city alone won't cut it. It needs to look less desolate.
Work on driving down resource usage or lag. PS takes up more resources than games that have much more content. Players now aren't likely to be tolerant of struggling to get something to work only to find there is less content than another game they could play.
At this point, PS needs ease of playing to keep it competitive. A lot of players have most things done for them in other games and new content and events constantly coming as a matter of course. PS can't provide that but it can put more emphasis on community that would still make it stand out and could provide enough fun to retain people.
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You're all speculating, but none of you are really hitting the nail on the head. PS doesn't know its place. It used to have a niche, but now it doesn't. If this game is a WoW clone, level up and kill things game, then it's a really, really bad one and there are plenty of other free options that are a million times better, so that's why you're not getting new players. If this game is a roleplay game, then it needs to start facilitating roleplay. That means having a heavy focus on GMs encouraging roleplay, discussions with players and clearly revealing all secrets regarding settings (because the 'spoilers' concept is absolute bull'), and making it easier to roleplay who you want to roleplay. If I want to roleplay someone who can run a lot, but I need to spend upwards of 20 hours grinding to get the stamina to run accross hydlaa, you're forcing mechanics onto someone in a roleplay game. And that's alienating and driving away players.
Also the system requirements are too damn high.
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I'd say the game also lacks artistic input which could attract some players. My bet is, this happens because of the restrictive ABC license, even though Weltall strongly disagrees, but concrete evidence only proves my point. (And Weltall - don't censor out this post just because you don't like this idea. It will only show that the argument is true and someone just doesn't want to admit it).
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I would appreciate it if a dev/gm could confirm or deny this.
Surely we are willing to increase the player base, the whole theme of 0.6 is about the 'fun' factor in the game, we stopped extending the game and decided instead to make the existing areas/features more interesting. This resulted in the past releases in graphical upgrade of most areas with more realistic textures, upgrade of hydlaa geometry, addition of more meaningful quest chains, addition of new crafting, magic resistance, a quite deep background of all races and much more. The items we have in our roadmap are all focused on better playability and more options for the players to interact with the world.
If the dev team is interested I have some ideas that I would be more than willing to share that might help.
There is a whole wish list forum where players collect ideas to improve the game. We go there and pickup the ones we can do at times. In general we have more ideas than resources, as making a mmorpg is an impossible task for a volunteer team. Ways to help are to spread the word about PS and get more developers to join our team, so we can improve the game faster and better.
I would suggest put a freeze on new features for awhile and work on old ones. If nothing else, stop adding things that can potentially make new bugs, more game play difficulties, etc... It doesn't matter if new features directly affect the old ones, more working parts will create new problems.
We are doing this since some time already, but we try to have some new content anyway as it's needed to complete the setting and make some quest chains actually meaningful and enyoable. As stated above we are in refinement mode since quite some time now.
Work on driving down resource usage or lag. PS takes up more resources than games that have much more content. Players now aren't likely to be tolerant of struggling to get something to work only to find there is less content than another game they could play.
This is unfortunately not something easy to resolve as we are dependent on the Crystal Space engine, which we like, but surely it's not the fastest in the world. We are collaborating strictly with Crystal Space and trying to improve/speed up the engine as much as we can. Many of the CS developers are former or actual PS developers. Commercial engines are surely faster and more polished as they have dozens of paid developers. What we can leverage is the community, by attracting more developers which can work on the engine as well, but it's surely a slow process. We recently did some updates to hydlaa which may make it faster, to be testesd in the next release.
PS doesn't know its place. It used to have a niche, but now it doesn't. If this game is a WoW clone, level up and kill things game, then it's a really, really bad one and there are plenty of other free options that are a million times better, so that's why you're not getting new players. If this game is a roleplay game, then it needs to start facilitating roleplay.
This is a very old and beaten point. Many say the game was richer when it was just a chat, so players coudn't level up, and they would just roleplay. That's surely possible, but it's not our objective to make a chat, and I think players can balance leveling and roleplay if they are mature enough in their gameplay. Roleplay is made by players, not by devs. So if someone has to "facilitate" roleplay that are the players.
I'd say the game also lacks artistic input which could attract some players. My bet is, this happens because of the restrictive ABC license.
This is a very old point as well, but the reality is that we have more art than any other open source project, and we have lived more than any other similar project, which is proving the point our license is the best way to go. Also in my experience artists are very willing to donate art to a project knowing how this will be used. The people who are still complaining about the license after 10 years of us providing a free game to everyone I think have not understood what Atomic Blue is and what is our mission and phylosophy. Probably poor messaging on our side, but all people who understood it are amazed by it and our results.
Still on art, I think have some unique and wonderful assets, just to mention one the very inspiring skecthes about the race structures you can see on the race pages. Surely it's not as much as a commercial mmorpg, but we are back to the initial point of resources and time.
How can you help?
- Find more developers who are interested in working on a real game, learn and contribute. Through your school, friends, buddies
- Create more ingame roleplay events
- Found new guilds a recruit other players. Create better and more interactive guild sites
- Be friendly with new players
- Post about PlaneShift in other forums and websites, vote PS up in sites you see, create your own fan sites
- Create videos, screenshots collections, streams or anything else you think may advertize the game and post it on the net
- Learn and understand who is making PlaneShift and how, why we are different and what a volunteer non profit org is
- Continue to play the game and give constructive feedback like the one in this post, we usually read many of the posts
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Thanks for the reply Talad. I can't do much but will try to help.
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I don't mean any disrespect here, but I get the impression that the dev team is more interested in maintaining a very small player base ( 30-50 players ) for the sake of testing, rather than having to manage a large player base of say 100-200 players. Is this the case? My rationale for thinking this is that you don't need 200+ players to test the game, likewise, a large player base would be more taxing on resources - both human and computer/network.
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...the past releases in graphical upgrade of most areas with more realistic textures, upgrade of hydlaa geometry, addition of more meaningful quest chains, addition of new crafting, magic resistance, a quite deep background of all races and much more. The items we have in our roadmap are all focused on better playability and more options for the players to interact with the world.
From a recent session (within the past week) while guiding a new player around:
"(01:06:09) [Tell] Name withheld tells you: Going from NWN2 and skyrim to this...I don't know if I can tolerate it tbh. I could overlook the appaling 1990 graphics if maybe there was dungeons and a large player base... but a few dozen people and a clunky engine like this? don't know if I can take it"
This is an attitude I see a lot of from critics of PlaneShift and I can't blame them - if it wasn't for the great players and the roleplay here I'd have left years ago, myself.
So if someone has to "facilitate" roleplay that are the players.
I actually kind of agree here. Kind of. This is being done by players, but only a few of us. I'll admit I'm not starting up any plots or organizations myself (I noticed "start a new guild" on the list of ways to help - we'd end up with the problem of more guilds than players. What we really need at present is more unity, not more separation), although I'm happy to jump into the current ones. What we need is a way to make it obvious to new players that may not read the forum threads that yes, there is roleplay going on here despite all the things that make most people leave the game right away, seeing as it's pretty much PS's one selling point to the player. And the more players we get, the more likely we are to have someone willing to volunteer for the team.
I'd say the game also lacks artistic input which could attract some players. My bet is, this happens because of the restrictive ABC license.
The people who are still complaining about the license after 10 years of us providing a free game to everyone I think have not understood what Atomic Blue is and what is our mission and phylosophy. Probably poor messaging on our side, but all people who understood it are amazed by it and our results.
Still on art, I think have some unique and wonderful assets, just to mention one the very inspiring skecthes about the race structures you can see on the race pages. Surely it's not as much as a commercial mmorpg, but we are back to the initial point of resources and time.
So perhaps a clear, concise explanation is in order?
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What we need is a way to make it obvious to new players that may not read the forum threads that yes, there is roleplay going on here despite all the things that make most people leave the game right away, seeing as it's pretty much PS's one selling point to the player.
I second Candy's post. Can't expect a new player to ask for RP in Gossip or in random /tells, like some of us have had to do. ;) Really, we can do more in game to facilitate RP, players and devs both. MyPlane has greater potential than it's currently serving (and by the way, is it me or the link above to MyPlane hasn't been working since, my guess is, the server change - planeshift.subhosting.net/myplane).
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I'm just happy to see such an in depth response from Talad.
I think the main problem right now is that PlaneShift is really two distinct games: the fight-train-quest "typical" MMO, and the text-based roleplay. The problem is that currently these two "games" don't fit together in any way. At any given time you can do one or the other, but never both. Ideally the game mechanics should lead players to situations where they can/should roleplay, and roleplay should be influenced/improved by the game mechanics.
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As much as I might hate to say it, if you want to attract and keep roleplayers, this game has to, HAS TO acquire a hardcore graphical update. And I'm not talking building geometry or the textures on the roads.
PC animations neeeeeed a near-complete overhaul.
We need OPTIONS for armor and clothing for the PCs' appearances.
I don't mean to sound pretentious but I've been RPing since I was 12 - I'm coming up on 11 years here. I've done MMORPGs, D&D and other tabletops, forums, MUDs, notebooks passed between friends in high school hallways, you name it. A person's vehicle into the world they're RPing in is their character, and even when you eliminate the visual (3D graphical element) of an MMORPG and leave us with just text, people still put a lot of weight on the visual descriptions of their characters.
Yeah - personally, I would rather see game mechanics improve, see more of that 'fun element' Talad keeps talking about being implemented. However, I'm almost 100% sure that the best way to attract new players would be seeing more diversity and possibility in PC appearance.
Keeping them here? Well, that's not a simple thing... That's where all the other elements come into play. Playability, RP, and as the dev team is already well aware: 100 million other little things.
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PS doesn't know its place. It used to have a niche, but now it doesn't. If this game is a WoW clone, level up and kill things game, then it's a really, really bad one and there are plenty of other free options that are a million times better, so that's why you're not getting new players. If this game is a roleplay game, then it needs to start facilitating roleplay.
This is a very old and beaten point. Many say the game was richer when it was just a chat, so players coudn't level up, and they would just roleplay. That's surely possible, but it's not our objective to make a chat, and I think players can balance leveling and roleplay if they are mature enough in their gameplay. Roleplay is made by players, not by devs. So if someone has to "facilitate" roleplay that are the players.
I think Ebonwumon nailed it. Of course Talad it requires people's interaction to get roleplay working, but that doesn't mean the devs don't have to do their part to enable people to roleplay correctly. My experience is that it pretty much is impossible for new players to RP "correctly", that is, according to settings, because very little of the settings can be learned about without playing the game for a long time. There has been / is a trend of people's back stories saying they came here with memory loss, and that has a reason. Because nobody knows anything about the world when they start playing, while their characters have lived there for a long time and should know lots of stuff, basically ruling out any explanation except memory loss.
I will give credit that you have improved the details page about races. That's definitely a start. However, there needs to be done more to enable newcomers to actually make up a character that fits in the settings. I don't say there should be no spoilers at all. But there has to be a reason why characters don't know about the spoilers, and there has to be a set of other things that aren't immediate part of the game that people should know about beforehand. Many of the "spoilers" should be information publicly available before even joining the game. That includes common knowledge, as well as things characters should not know about, or should fear.
Blabla I should stop talking because Talad probably won't read this anyway :(
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Blabla I should stop talking because Talad probably won't read this anyway :(
A reasonable start for you would be to stop that offending tone....
It certainly would be nice to know about the world before you start rp, _but_ most players will not like to read through tons of web pages before they even start to get into the play. So this is a loss-loss situation....
Personally, I think the graphics engine is a source of some problems. Clipping errors, where mountains appear when you turn your head are really an eighties' problem.
What really would be needed, again in my personal opinion (one of a large number :( ), is an interface between npc and rp guided playing. E.g. rp trainers (high grade players for a magic way, or weapon handling, or...). But how this would be possible without wide spread abuse, I do not really know...
And, for npc guided players: more and more consistent quest paths for developing a character identity on that base... As it is now: you try to be nice, ok, no sleep glyph. You miss one answer, ok, no creature glyph... but now I have four mind glyphs, and cannot use them for anything... Such things are creating an inconsistent feeling.
So much for my 2 €cents, when I actually didn't want to talk in this thread ...
And, I started a few months ago, and I like the game, the people, and the setup. Thank you!
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I told myself I would stop doing forum dissertations here but oh well. Even if I don't play the game anymore, I still seem to care about it.
We are doing this since some time already, but we try to have some new content anyway as it's needed to complete the setting and make some quest chains actually meaningful and enyoable. As stated above we are in refinement mode since quite some time now.
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This is a very old point as well, but the reality is that we have more art than any other open source project, and we have lived more than any other similar project, which is proving the point our license is the best way to go. Also in my experience artists are very willing to donate art to a project knowing how this will be used. The people who are still complaining about the license after 10 years of us providing a free game to everyone I think have not understood what Atomic Blue is and what is our mission and phylosophy. Probably poor messaging on our side, but all people who understood it are amazed by it and our results.
Still on art, I think have some unique and wonderful assets, just to mention one the very inspiring skecthes about the race structures you can see on the race pages. Surely it's not as much as a commercial mmorpg, but we are back to the initial point of resources and time.
How can you help?
- Find more developers who are interested in working on a real game, learn and contribute. Through your school, friends, buddies
- Create more ingame roleplay events
- Found new guilds a recruit other players. Create better and more interactive guild sites
- Be friendly with new players
- Post about PlaneShift in other forums and websites, vote PS up in sites you see, create your own fan sites
- Create videos, screenshots collections, streams or anything else you think may advertize the game and post it on the net
- Learn and understand who is making PlaneShift and how, why we are different and what a volunteer non profit org is
- Continue to play the game and give constructive feedback like the one in this post, we usually read many of the posts
Ok, on the refinement thing.... Adding leather working doesn't really flesh out settings. It adds a new feature that may or may not cause new problems. Adding new models, although nice, are not rounding out settings. I can see refining quests to make them less clunky, but if you really want to refine the settings, work on writing. Put more information, details, out there for the players to work with. Props and mechanics are nice and helpful, but if the game has gone this long without them, it's not those things that were the driving force of player retention. ;)
On the topic of the art. The problem is not really the license, it's goodwill. I don't mind a license that protects the project from getting the rug pulled from under it, I do mind handing over my work and effort to a project that I no longer have goodwill towards. I'm afraid that many former artists and whatnot feel like I feel: there have been too many acts that were not made in good faith and too much ill will that still lingers. As for new artists, the game probably looks far enough behind to where many artists would rather look for a project that has more advanced graphics. Not much you can do there since it is a self perpetuating problem.
On the topic of player help... The newer players could stand to do more. The initial player base of PS was small and grew, so it definitely can be done. But I've run into a great deal of apathy/laziness in a lot of newer players. There are some that definitely work hard to try and build up the game but I don't think there are enough and this is a big job to place on their backs. Older players aren't likely to keep trying in any great numbers, again, it's the goodwill thing. Really, guilds and events and all of that are going to amount to a great deal of nothing if the RPers don't pull together and work on their cohesion.
There have been a couple events in the last several month, there are always guilds around, and usually there is someone RPing. Player count jumped for a moment then plummeted worse than I have ever seen. It's not like it used to be where RPers clumped in the face of RP being affected or dropping off. Say what you want, but it did stem the hemorrhage of RPers for awhile. Players need to actually spend time developing the community by building closer ties to each other. To a certain extent, they just need to build an OOC rapport with each other. Right now players don't seem to feel inclined to stop doing boring stuff just to go find someone they like RPing with. :/
It really should be much easier to build PS up right now since most of the flamewars and anger have left, but in a way the apathy is worse. At least when people were foaming at the mouth, it was because they cared. A lot of the people that complained and struck out the most would also turn around and still try and do something for the good of the game. If there is one thing that would really help, it would be doing something about the apathy. However, I admittedly have no idea on how to do that in the game's current environment.
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Dynamic world occurrences. This is never going to compete with the likes of WoW, but as it stands now, it's just as static, with 95% less content.
The planeshift setting could be made very much more enjoyable, and exciting, by introducing dynamic, random, events in.
Also - challenge, reasons to group. I've said before that there is no point to hunting if the mobs just stand there, for the most part, and wait for you to hit them. I heard that they were switched off of aggression, because they were 'too hard'. Cry more. Danger is good.
Danger and dynamic content is fantastic.
Hence, I think, that when the AI tribes update finally gets put in place, then things will start to pick up again - because that creates interesting scenarios.
At the moment there are no interesting new scenarios.
Imagination and community roleplay is all well and good, but if the world is static then you run into a fairly static number of things you're able to feed off of. If you can create emergent gameplay then you can feed imagination. Look at Dwarf Fortress and the number of insane stories that game comes up with, based on entirely on the shenanigans of a bunch of crazed ASCII symbols. Admittedly it doesn't work quite the same way in an MMO, but it's a good example of how the two intertwine.
One cannot simply fall back on the community, when other games offer more to feed their communities.
Games like Ryzom, for instance, have interesting little quirks - for instance, their animals migrate and go places. They interact with each other - predators will hunt other animals, etc.
In the tribes system you have various AI needs - people will naturally prefer one tribe over another. This will create interesting player interaction, based entirely around game mechanics, if you take it far enough.
Tell me that the community would not feed off of things like this.
What we have is too static. You cannot rely on GM events all the time. Feed the community, and the rest follows naturally. Humans attach narratives to everything and anything.
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There have been a couple events in the last several month, there are always guilds around, and usually there is someone RPing. Player count jumped for a moment then plummeted worse than I have ever seen. It's not like it used to be where RPers clumped in the face of RP being affected or dropping off. Say what you want, but it did stem the hemorrhage of RPers for awhile. Players need to actually spend time developing the community by building closer ties to each other. To a certain extent, they just need to build an OOC rapport with each other. Right now players don't seem to feel inclined to stop doing boring stuff just to go find someone they like RPing with. :/
To be fair a lot of that has to do with scheduling. Numbers always drop dramatically around finals, and midterm times, and rise during vacations and the summer. At this point in the year I think that a lot of the players who would be online have either work, or school to do. Of course that doesn't account for all of it, it does explain some.
I told myself I would stop doing forum dissertations here but oh well. Even if I don't play the game anymore, I still seem to care about it.
Well I could have told you that :P Planeshift does have life in it still. If people do what they can than we can make things thrive again.
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Perhaps one could email occasional updates to the players on the progress of the project. If it doesn't get lost in the spam folder it could bring back old players. Now I am not sure how feasible this would be with the massive number of accounts, or if it would be an unwanted nuisance, but it might be worth a try.
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Whatever solution PS uses, it's going to have to be the one that requires the least resources. :/
To be fair a lot of that has to do with scheduling. Numbers always drop dramatically around finals, and midterm times, and rise during vacations and the summer. At this point in the year I think that a lot of the players who would be online have either work, or school to do. Of course that doesn't account for all of it, it does explain some.
Well I could have told you that :P Planeshift does have life in it still. If people do what they can than we can make things thrive again.
Yeah but it rose the highest during what would qualify as being in session for school and starting new years for businesses. Also, the dips and peaks are much lower than last year for the same time. I saved the graphs somewhere. XD They problem is that there are players in the game but they haven't come together enough to feel like a "community". People always go out of their way for having fun, the fact that people aren't going quite as far now is evidence of lack of fun connected to the game, but that is a much harder thing to manage.
Also, despite my still having a bit of a soft spot for PS. Giving suggestions is pretty much about as far as I will go at this point. Especially that I now have another outlet for the kind of RP I like, I don't have to come back and try to make RP work out of nostalgia and desperation for the kind of fun I used to have. I doubt you will get former players back since those that didn't leave because of disillusionment probably left because of technical difficulties and now requirements are even higher. But if you focus on new players, you stand a chance.
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Its nice to hear what others think on the mater, I don't agree with all of it but I see some valid points. For me personaly I don't believe ps will ever be as good as Skyrim or any other new game. I think its impossible to please every player that comes along and the only ones that will stay are the ones that see the true value of ps and can enjoy its very immersive evironment. I have always played with the hope to see it become more and more immersive as I find that I love a game if I feal like I am actualy a part of it. I look forward to future content with great anticipation.
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PS's community coupled with imagination can provide a more than suitable immerssive environment, perhaps better that more visually developed games, but if all you have is the base game... then yeah, that will never be able to compete with commercial games. :/
I have to admit though, PS has spoiled me with not having those short character limits and /me working in tells along with /my.
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Blabla I should stop talking because Talad probably won't read this anyway :(
A reasonable start for you would be to stop that offending tone....
I feel like I should add that I'm not intentionally sounding offensive, and I'm really sorry if that's how I sound. (I've made this experience before in communities I wasn't convinced I belonged in, that people started telling me I was sounding too offensive, but I thought I had improved... apparently, I was wrong. I'm really sorry for that. I will stop posting here. I just wanted to help. Sorry.)
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Your comments were spot on Derula, it was the throwaway last statement "blabla...etc" that left a bad impression. I've long regarded the 'spoilophobia' as excessive and contrary to good gameplay. If you cannot know the local commons without living through them for a long time then it is a bit much to be asked to put up with consistent nit picking that you're doing it wrong. Maybe just maybe I'm doing it wrong because there is no way for me to know what is the right way and I just have to try to muddle through as best I can. If I join a new game and people are always correcting my manners I'm going to stop playing pretty soon and if I get really offended by it I am going to make as big a stink as I possibly can burning my bridges.
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This is what I believe is the matter at hand.
When I first started playing Planeshift it was well populated with players. Player turnover is a very typical thing in Planeshift and has been in many other games, there is no problem with losing old players. People come on a game, get addicted, start to get bored of it, sometimes join the Dev/GM team, stick in there for awhile and then become pop-in-ers (come on every now and then). Then never seen again or seen 2 years later.
If a game loses a large number of experienced and older players quickly in a short amount of time, then the amount of newer players don't stay as long.
When I started playing Planeshift back in the old days of Steel Blue, there was a large number of new players coming through. When me and my brother first started Kore Irka Clan it boomed pretty quickly and we had plenty of new players coming into the game we could recruit. Some stayed longer than others, which is very typical.
I believe the devs need to solely work on and I mean for the next year or two. Is upgrading the Character creation (understand-ability), tutorial (new art would make new players go this is a cool free game!), character & NPC interaction (NPC speaking and mouth moving as a default setting), chain quests to make more sense as to where to start off and who to go to next. Generally making the game easier
Also redo Harnquists, it's storyline (from what I've heard) of the Octarchy paying for it is mary sue. It's a smithy and it should be dirty and what not.
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Blabla I should stop talking because Talad probably won't read this anyway :(
A reasonable start for you would be to stop that offending tone....
I feel like I should add that I'm not intentionally sounding offensive, and I'm really sorry if that's how I sound. (I've made this experience before in communities I wasn't convinced I belonged in, that people started telling me I was sounding too offensive, but I thought I had improved... apparently, I was wrong. I'm really sorry for that. I will stop posting here. I just wanted to help. Sorry.)
Now I'm very sorry for putting my foot in...
I appreciate your comments, and, obviopusly, you have much morte ps experience than I do. So, please, don't take my remark too seriously. I just wanteted to point out that by that last remark you do not make the devs, and especially Talad very responsive to what you say.
Please accept my apologies for doing the same thing I accused you of.
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I don't mean any disrespect here, but I get the impression that the dev team is more interested in maintaining a very small player base ( 30-50 players ) for the sake of testing, rather than having to manage a large player base of say 100-200 players. Is this the case?
Absolutely not, we want as many players as possible, actually going back to about 200 concurrent players and then to about 500 is a goal we have since some time. More players generate more potential new developers as well.
From a recent session (within the past week) while guiding a new player around:
"(01:06:09) [Tell] Name withheld tells you: Going from NWN2 and skyrim to this...I don't know if I can tolerate it tbh. I could overlook the appaling 1990 graphics if maybe there was dungeons and a large player base... but a few dozen people and a clunky engine like this? don't know if I can take it"
If you compare us with Skyrim, there is definitely no way for us to be competitive. We are bunch of friends doing PS on the spare time. Skyrim is the biggest RPG title to date worldwide, with hundreds of employees working on it for years with estimated funding of 100 million dollars.
So perhaps a clear, concise explanation is in order? (about license)
There is a whole page on the license here (http://www.planeshift.it/license.html), which includes also a short version. Anyway if you want a summary, our organization is made to create a free mmorpg game based on community contributions and ensuring our project can't be forked/copied/dissolved. There are only benefits for the players and for the developers in such a model, and I think with 10 years of existance and improvements/expansion to the game that's pretty much proven.
I will give credit that you have improved the details page about races. That's definitely a start. However, there needs to be done more to enable newcomers to actually make up a character that fits in the settings.
Can you make a practical example of what you think it's needed here?
To be fair a lot of that has to do with scheduling. Numbers always drop dramatically around finals, and midterm times, and rise during vacations and the summer. At this point in the year I think that a lot of the players who would be online have either work, or school to do. Of course that doesn't account for all of it, it does explain some.
On the topic of losing players, that's normal between releases, PlaneShift is still in unfinished state, and people usually check in whenever we release something new, then after some time they lose interest and wait to join back at the next release. We didn't release in 4 months now, and that's why we have less players. In addition we never found a good Public Relation person, and our presence on the web is pretty poor. That's why we don't get too many new players (without mentioning the other 1000 MMO existing these days and not 6-7 years ago). As I see it many pieces are really coming together, even if slowly and there will be a time where the chain will be complete and PS will actually start to be really fun to play; that day players will just flow in virally. So in general I think that improving the game is the best way to retain players.
I believe the devs need to solely work on and I mean for the next year or two. Is upgrading the Character creation (understand-ability), tutorial (new art would make new players go this is a cool free game!), character & NPC interaction (NPC speaking and mouth moving as a default setting), chain quests to make more sense as to where to start off and who to go to next. Generally making the game easier
As much as I might hate to say it, if you want to attract and keep roleplayers, this game has to, HAS TO acquire a hardcore graphical update.
PC animations neeeeeed a near-complete overhaul.
We need OPTIONS for armor and clothing for the PCs' appearances.
I totally agree with both, and that's what we are working on. The tutorial gfx upgrade is completed (same upgrade we did to hydlaa main some time ago), and will be part of next release. For char animations that's something I'm trying to improve since long time, but we never found good animators who really want to do the work. One thing we did is to improve the speed of walking so we can create more natural animations, also a fix has been implemented to allow smoother transitions between animations (you will see it in next release). For char appearance, I think will be great to have face morphing (like jaw, eyes, nose, ... changes). This is possible but not easy, and as usual requires someone who works on it with knowledge of cal3d and 3d animations, which at the moment we don't have (but it's on our priority list since quite some time now).
The planeshift setting could be made very much more enjoyable, and exciting, by introducing dynamic, random, events in.
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Danger and dynamic content is fantastic.
Hence, I think, that when the AI tribes update finally gets put in place, then things will start to pick up again - because that creates interesting scenarios.
Yes, the tribes system is designed to do this, and we had pretty good improvements in this area recently. It's a BIG topic, and needs to be worked on from different perspectives (settings, rules, combat mechanics, ...). The base is really present now, needs bit more focus to really kick off. In terms of world interaction we decided to add the NPCs day/night cycle to have a more dynamic world. Still work needed here.
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Thanks bilbous and Pakarro, maybe I was overreacting but I've made experiences in the past that I appeared too offensive... (it's also why I try to rarely post here because I hold a personal grunge against the game which is mostly my own fault, and I'm afraid my personal opinion might make its way into what I say where it would be somewhat out of place; and I know that it's been a huge letdown to see Aiwendil post so aggressively after he's been a person I've been looking up to ingame, so I want to avoid being a similar letdown to others still in the game; but then probably nobody cares about any of this)
I will give credit that you have improved the details page about races. That's definitely a start. However, there needs to be done more to enable newcomers to actually make up a character that fits in the settings.
Can you make a practical example of what you think it's needed here?
Thanks for responding to my comment. I have said that before somewhere else, but I will repeat it, hoping that you read it (even if Aiwendil were right and you'd ignore it anyway...)
What I have seen in a different roleplay-centered game is the following approach: everything about the world you can actually play in is spoilers. You know about as much about the world when you get in as a new player knows about Yliakum. However, there is an in-settings explanation why: the actually playable part of the world is an island that is cut off from mainland, and only rumors exist about this island. The rest of the game world is decidedly unplayable, but documented. There exists lots of information about the mainland on their website: maps, country names and uniquenesses, cities and what happens in them, even river names, forest names etc; who usually lives where, what life is like in the different parts of the world etc. Everything.
I think something similar could be done with Yliakum. You could (for example) decide that the Dome is the only playable level, and all the other levels are non-playable. Then, you could write details about the other levels and make them freely available on the net. The only thing still missing would a reason why people have never come to the Dome before, or know nothing about it. In that other game, the island is really an isolated place, and people can't freely go and leave there. There's a legend about the island. There's rumors. No information about the island is available on mainland. The devs would have to find a reason why the Dome is isolated, so that there's an actual reason newcomers know nothing about the area they live in (being newcomers from one of the other levels). Of course, it would require a change in the settings... I cannot tell how much would need to change, because I don't know all of settings. But I think it would be possible.
Now there's those who said "nobody reads all that crap to play a game". I'm not so sure! That other game is
- German only
- 2D with not very pretty graphics
- Non-commercial
and I think it has a larger player base than PlaneShift (judging from their IRC channels; I've not actually played it). The thing is that it works so much better for serious roleplayers, I think.
NOW.
If you're going to do that, there is four more things that game has, and I think are VITAL for the concept to actually work. These are:
- VERY strict RP rules and enforcement
- New character accounts NEED a two-page back story for the character and are only activated if another player (something like an advisor in PS) confirms that the story is good and fits settings
- A startup bonus for new characters
- Death isn't free.
On RP rules: I'll name an example. They have a rule that magic use NEEDS TO be RPed before the actual use. If you get caught not doing that, you can get banned. Obviously, bad names aren't only renamed if a lazy GM stumbles across them, but would never make it through character activation. And so on.
On character activation: this is the most important thing that is missing with PS I think. Here, people can just create an char and jump right in. This might lead to more new characters in the short term, but also to DISCOURAGEMENT of serious roleplay. It's just not worth trying to ask someone for the way to somewhere when his desc is empty. And so on. If there IS information, people are encouraged and supported in giving serious thought to their characters. In the long term, I can't think of any better concept to have a REAL RP based game going well.
On the startup bonus for new characters: when you create a character, you select their race, job etc. and according to your selection, you start with a default set of clothes (instead of naked), weapons/items, food, and/or money (and well, some ranks in certain skills, but PS already has that).
On death: If a character dies three times, there is a team (i.e. Godly) discussion about whether or not the character will be allowed to live once more. (of course, bug-induced deaths shouldn't be counted in)
Now you might wonder if that's not more team involvement than you can handle. On the one hand, it's probably too much for only the GMs to handle. But there's also the possibility of player councils (as I said, similar to advisors). Obviously, I can't tell if it will work for PlaneShift. But it works for that game very well, although it is in some ways inferior to PlaneShift in mechanics or graphics. (Not in all ways, obviously; there's a job system in place which is far superior to PS' in my opinion; it limits the leveling of skills based on creation choices; but then that's okay imho because it makes people seriously think about how they set up their character.)
Now I'm gonna say. That game is built on top of the Ultima Online engine, which is a commercial effort. However, all the game's story and settings, the char creation etc, the races and... I guess at least some of the graphics are all created in a free effort. I'm aware PS' engine might never be perfect, but I don't think that's PlaneShift's main problem. The main problem is that "identity crisis". And I can't think of any other way to solve it than through the above.
But that's just my opinion.
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On the topic of losing players, that's normal between releases, PlaneShift is still in unfinished state, and people usually check in whenever we release something new, then after some time they lose interest and wait to join back at the next release. We didn't release in 4 months now, and that's why we have less players. In addition we never found a good Public Relation person, and our presence on the web is pretty poor. That's why we don't get too many new players (without mentioning the other 1000 MMO existing these days and not 6-7 years ago). As I see it many pieces are really coming together, even if slowly and there will be a time where the chain will be complete and PS will actually start to be really fun to play; that day players will just flow in virally. So in general I think that improving the game is the best way to retain players.
The real big problem here is that there is nothing that separates or delineates PS from the rest of the 100000 MMOs out there. I think the developers need to be thinking of ways to make this game unique, different, than all the others. That's how you create draw. Instead, I see the design of this game falling into all the same potholes and traps that all the other games do. The one thing that does separate us, as i said before, is the community. The question we should be asking is not, 'Why are people leaving?" but "What makes you stay?" Take those values and build upon them.
I know why I stay, and it's because I see the value of this game as a storytelling and creative medium. Not only are we free to RP here, but it's actually the main focus of the player community. So, I would like to see more tools and features developed that build off of that focus.
Just off the top of my head here, but what about the game be developed more as a campaign setting than anything else. Then, give the players tools to develop quests, challenges, campaigns for each other to play. Maybe there can be two different account types, one that gives the player DM or GM like capabilities (in the tabletop sense of the term, not how the GMs function now), Player created NPCs, spawning monsters, quest rewards, the tools to put other players through a good, healthy RP experience.
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If you're going to do that, there is four more things that game has, and I think are VITAL for the concept to actually work. These are:
- VERY strict RP rules and enforcement
- New character accounts NEED a two-page back story for the character and are only activated if another player (something like an advisor in PS) confirms that the story is good and fits settings
- A startup bonus for new characters
- Death isn't free.
On RP rules: I'll name an example. They have a rule that magic use NEEDS TO be RPed before the actual use. If you get caught not doing that, you can get banned. Obviously, bad names aren't only renamed if a lazy GM stumbles across them, but would never make it through character activation. And so on.
On character activation: this is the most important thing that is missing with PS I think. Here, people can just create an char and jump right in. This might lead to more new characters in the short term, but also to DISCOURAGEMENT of serious roleplay. It's just not worth trying to ask someone for the way to somewhere when his desc is empty. And so on. If there IS information, people are encouraged and supported in giving serious thought to their characters. In the long term, I can't think of any better concept to have a REAL RP based game going well.
On the startup bonus for new characters: when you create a character, you select their race, job etc. and according to your selection, you start with a default set of clothes (instead of naked), weapons/items, food, and/or money (and well, some ranks in certain skills, but PS already has that).
On death: If a character dies three times, there is a team (i.e. Godly) discussion about whether or not the character will be allowed to live once more. (of course, bug-induced deaths shouldn't be counted in)
Now you might wonder if that's not more team involvement than you can handle. On the one hand, it's probably too much for only the GMs to handle. But there's also the possibility of player councils (as I said, similar to advisors). Obviously, I can't tell if it will work for PlaneShift. But it works for that game very well, although it is in some ways inferior to PlaneShift in mechanics or graphics. (Not in all ways, obviously; there's a job system in place which is far superior to PS' in my opinion; it limits the leveling of skills based on creation choices; but then that's okay imho because it makes people seriously think about how they set up their character.)
Now I'm gonna say. That game is built on top of the Ultima Online engine, which is a commercial effort. However, all the game's story and settings, the char creation etc, the races and... I guess at least some of the graphics are all created in a free effort. I'm aware PS' engine might never be perfect, but I don't think that's PlaneShift's main problem. The main problem is that "identity crisis". And I can't think of any other way to solve it than through the above.
But that's just my opinion.
Ehh, those rules are too restrictive. They might work for a forum-based RPG (although even there two pages of backstory required would make most people assume the admin pictures themself a dictator of a small country that is their forum), but they'd only discourage RP in an MMO and make us look like a bunch of elitist pricks. Roleplaying should be made easier, not more intimidating.
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Ehh, those rules are too restrictive. They might work for a forum-based RPG (although even there two pages of backstory required would make most people assume the admin pictures themself a dictator of a small country that is their forum), but they'd only discourage RP in an MMO and make us look like a bunch of elitist pricks. Roleplaying should be made easier, not more intimidating.
Thanks for your input.
As I said, this is just an example, and I am not sure whether it would work for PlaneShift. But as I said, it works for that game. It has lots of players, the community is very nice and helpful, and I didn't get the impression that the admins are total pricks either. My first character's backstory was rejected. This was very well reasoned in personal discussion with the revising player, and I was given the chance to alter my backstory, although I chose an elven race which in that game is much more different from humans than in PS, it is hard to come up with a valid reason why an elf would move to that island, and the char creation page warns that new players should probably not start with one. My second one (a human) was accepted, and I was given some hints what to start with given the nature of my char. (I never actually played though)
But, it doesn't have to be that strict for PlaneShift. What really is important in my view, is to give the player a possibility to create a character with a good backstory before joining the game, and to give a reason why all content in the game is not known to any new characters. I think those are the most important lessons PlaneShift needs to learn, if it really wants to have roleplay that is easy to get into and very strong / high quality. New players shouldn't be forced to create a character first before they can even figure out what back story it might have, and the information needed for backstories should be centralized in the PS homepage, not in various libraries and other places spread out across the game world.
Everything else I said are just examples taken from a game where this works, since Talad asked for an example.
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Planeshift is no longer a fully RP based game, infact when EZPCUSA combined with Laanx it becam a combined server. I don't think Planeshift lacks in RP and I don't think that's the issue here. Having to activate your storyline is a bit pathetic tbh.
However, you got the rest right.
-Start up bonus... I'm gonna take it this means more tria after tutorial (short or long way), and information on means to get more tria for new players like mining, what you need to do to be able to mine, where to mine.
-Death isn't free, absolutely agree.
What I think could be useful towards new palyers understanding of Planshifts's setting and RP and looks good at the same time. Is a clip / trailer that automatically plays (and can be skipped after the second view) while Planeshift is loading or before it loads. Like when you play the Sims, it plays that little clip at the beginning.
Anyways, this clip could be very dense in Planeshift's setting. I also think something like a setting storyline could help. What I'm meaning is like a recent large event, a war, a fight between gods, various attacks from the Stone Labyrinths, etc. For example, WoW and it's war between Horde and Alliance(?).
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I also think something like a setting storyline could help. What I'm meaning is like a recent large event, a war, a fight between gods, various attacks from the Stone Labyrinths, etc. For example, WoW and it's war between Horde and Alliance(?).
He has a valid point, actually. Encouraging RP would probably be easier if the players had a few more jumping-off points, like a more active central theme or plot to the game. Or a few of them. I mean, Planeshift has a wonderful world built but despite the depth of some quests, it just doesn't seem like it really has much going on in it. Perhaps we'll see more opportunity for this when we see more explorable content in the game.
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-Start up bonus... I'm gonna take it this means more tria after tutorial (short or long way), and information on means to get more tria for new players like mining, what you need to do to be able to mine, where to mine.
Or just make the starters a lot better damnit. What's the point of spawning such a weakling? Isn't every grown-up citizen supposed to know how to handle a weapon? 'Start your journey with frustration' could be a catchphrase for this game. Since it takes ages (and is anti-fun) to bring up a skill to any usable level, why not give starters three or four skills at level 20? They can still start from scratches if they want to learn new stuff.
About settings... I think a good start would be a paragraph about the average Joe's everyday life on each Level, a reason why there are so many bloody adventurers and always small running jobs available for them, why plants grow where no light goes and how magic is just any guy's tool and not cryptic at all.
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Honestly I think if new players were actualy given a full set of armor and two weapons or a weapon and shield combo of their choice along with a glyph or two of their choice and higher starting stats so they are not stuck killing rats for hours or trying to mine for long periods just to get a few ore (because the skills max lvl has been raised to 200 and all the mobs/jobs made tougher) you would see less players quiting withing the first few hours of gameplay. I agree Vakachehk on the idea of polishing up the questing system and some other things that need fine tuning. I think it should be made more clear in the character creation and on the ps website how sertain things will effect the character. I have seen players joing the game and have to start with nothing because they chose skills that were not even implemented yet.
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re: setting tips
Perhaps once a character has more than 5 hours of game time the loading screens could display different settings tips instead of the same old RP ideas; along the lines of the skyrim load screens.
- Nova
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Honestly I think if new players were actualy given a full set of armor and two weapons or a weapon and shield combo of their choice along with a glyph or two of their choice and higher starting stats so they are not stuck killing rats for hours or trying to mine for long periods just to get a few ore...
Well a full set of leather armor costs what? 1300 tria? The problem isn't so much with what we give them, but with what we tell them. There should be some hint like "If you're planning to explore some of the more dangerous areas of the Dome, you should look into getting yourself some armor/weapons/gliphs. This NPC sells these basic items and can usually be found here. If you're looking to study magic, seek out the magic shop just outside Hydlaa, etc"
I do agree that players should be able to choose a few skills in character creation to start with at around 10-15. And there should be a warning about choosing skills that don't exist yet.
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Most of the info tman wants here, are in the tutorials anyways. What I think would be nice, is a sentence somewehere (prominently, so you don't miss it):
If you want to know something, choose a fellow player, politely introduce yourself, and ask away. But don't forget that your character does the asking (which is called "in character" = ic), and not you, the player (which is ooc "out of character"). Don't wildly look for trainers, but ask your fellow citizens.
Something in that way, maybe more elaborate ... Just teach people to co-operate as soon as possible. The rest will probably be ok. Probably everyone of us would be happy to help by healing in fights, or cooperative hunting and telling little tricks. You just have to make newbies to ask for help and not be afraid...
Then people will grow into the concept of rp. If you demand too much in the beginning, you overload players, and they will quit. Not because it is boring or low graphics quality or something, but because it is too much stress. I for my part started in ezpc, because I was afraid I could never meet the standards of rp required here. Sometimes I still am...
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Three words. Game Master involvement. Unexpected or epic plots sprung on the community by those with the abilitys to create unique and interesting episodes. On several occasions I have had GM's do interesting things that broke the grind up. One occasion,to catch a theif at the Gugrontid alter was transported iside the alter to spy without being seen. Another Rampaging maulberlords at the copper mine.
But even a monthly or bi-monthly "campaign", would be very entertaining and help to give the impression that you are part of a living world.
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And you returning, Dramborleg, at least on sundays. ;)
Estyo — Esanor.
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Yeah I'll be here.
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Welcome back Dramborleg!
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Obviously, you need to be bringing in a steady flow of new players to actually have any number of active ones. And since I've only been playing about a month I can give some insight about the first impressions of a new player.
Basically, in order to get more players, you need to improve on the tutorials and documentation. New players aren't going to stick around if they can't even figure out how to play the game. I found the character creation a bit intimidating, but not unbearable. However, I spent a couple weeks just figuring out how to drink a potion. And the crafting books, the information should be sorted by item (sabre, broadsword, and so on), not by task (shape, forge, and so on) and overlapping information should be merged or condensed. For instance, regardless of the material you make the shields out of, if the process for that type is the same, then why does it need a separate entry? And yes, there are crafting books available that are written by other players, but what happens when those players no longer play or if an update makes the information in those books incorrect? The fact that you even need these third party books should tell you there is a problem.
There are also little things that kill that immersion quality of role playing, things like displaying the weight of the furnace (do we need to know that) or floating herbs/plants and the torches in the Bronze Door Fortress where the flames all need to be raised up higher.
Some have said that the graphics are horrible, and to some degree that is the case, but more of that is the graphics errors like the rainbow effect in some areas, and the ability to see through the ground in others as well as some other anomalies. The engine definitely runs heavy and seems to run at the same speed on a single core machine with 2GB of RAM as it does on a dual core machine with 4GB of RAM. And that's in both Windows and Linux. Furthermore, certain sounds (which ones I can't be sure of) seem to crash the Windows client, especially in the area of the arena. This may be an OpenAL issue, but I don't know. But it looks like development for OpenAL on Windows stalled 3 years ago, and might be a problem later on, even if it isn't a problem now, so it might be a good idea to reevaluate that dependency or at least look into the actual opensource version, "OpenAL soft".
In the case of actual graphics, I don't think it's fair to compare PlaneShift to games like WoW. However, if you've ever played RuneScape you'd see just how bad graphics (along with every other aspect of a game) can be. So why is RuneScape so much more successful than PlaneShift? Most likely it all comes down to resources. They have an active development team and they continue to add custom content. The only other real advantage they have, aside from commercial marketing, is that there is no installation required as the game plays from within a browser. And while all of this may sound irrelevant, RuneScape usually has thousands of active players logged in at any given moment.
But success can't be measured on number of players alone, and despite it's quirks, I am enjoying the overall gameplay experience.
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CS obviously doesn't really fully benefit from mutli-core architectures, as was pointed out before.
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Just a quick idea here, partly borrowed from another game, where it helped to improve player retention and create a closer community:
* Automatically set a "new player" flag on new characters (that can be easily switched off for those older players who create new characters or that is automatically switched off if the account has in game time exceeding a certain amount of hours) that is discretely visible to anyone.
* Set up a mentoring system, where players who mentor new players get some kind of rewards based on how many players they've mentored, but that is not an overpowered item, but rather a symbol of their efforts in helping new players.
* Give new players a tip in the tutorial that they should seek a mentor.
* Integrate the mentoring system in some way into the game world so that it makes sense (or make a good starting point for the player and mentor to come up with a reason).
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Just a quick idea here, partly borrowed from another game, where it helped to improve player retention and create a closer community:
* Automatically set a "new player" flag on new characters (that can be easily switched off for those older players who create new characters or that is automatically switched off if the account has in game time exceeding a certain amount of hours) that is discretely visible to anyone.
* Set up a mentoring system, where players who mentor new players get some kind of rewards based on how many players they've mentored, but that is not an overpowered item, but rather a symbol of their efforts in helping new players.
* Give new players a tip in the tutorial that they should seek a mentor.
* Integrate the mentoring system in some way into the game world so that it makes sense (or make a good starting point for the player and mentor to come up with a reason).
At this point there is the help channel already. The problem with that is that there aren't many advisers on the channel. I have my client set to auto request being an adviser. Maybe just throw a tip in the loading screens that says "We need more advisers in help!" would help.
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At this point there is the help channel already. The problem with that is that there aren't many advisers on the channel. I have my client set to auto request being an adviser. Maybe just throw a tip in the loading screens that says "We need more advisers in help!" would help.
Great idea, I will do this, too. Even though PlaneShift still holds many secrets to me, I can certainly assist new players (and am already doing this whenever I meet one).
Gonger Xaraha
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* Integrate the mentoring system in some way into the game world so that it makes sense (or make a good starting point for the player and mentor to come up with a reason).
guilds are in a good position to do this: many probably do have a formal or informal mentoring system. but i do have a couple of other suggestions:
- in the days before a suitable guild turns up, just talking in character to a new player is usually welcome interaction - and gives him or her the chance to ask for help without always having to initiate a conversation in a new environment, which can be intimidating. unfriendly sorts, you can figure out a way: when i was new, one character snarled at me then sent me a /tell.
- if someone new is interested, share as much of your character's RP involvement as is natural - likely you would warn someone new in town about a public menace, for instance. i just think it helps let people know that there are things (sort of, sometimes) happening. :)
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To be honest I've never been a fan of the tutorial being mandatory for every new character. It never even existed when I started and ever since It's implementation I was always wary of making new characters. I started again yesterday after a few years away from PS and was thrown into the tutorial. Luckily I've played before, so I just constantly clicked through endless nonsense that these NPC's throw at you, even doing this shortcut took me 15 minutes to break out of this annoying feature. Their was two of us in this area and I had to explain to the other person what it was, and told him to read what the NPC's were saying so he could learn the basics of the game. He PM'ed me after finally making it past this nonsense (1 hour later I may add) explaining that he learned a thing or two there but nothing he couldn't of learned after 1 hour of being in the actual game. He still seemed frustrated after making it through and needless to say he logged off shortly after.
I could go into detail but I won't. The fact is I PERSONALLY feel this tutorial drives many people away from the game before they even make it through to the game. I was suprised to see it still even existed. I'd love to see some numbers on how many players quit the game before getting past this feature.
I understand It's value of keeping "wtf is this game and wtf do i do" away fro Hydlaa. But It's implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Thankfully wwhen I started in 2006 it didn't exist, or I know for a fact I wouldn;t of made it past the tutorial. Thankfully the first person I met ingame was Farren Kutter who learned me the basics. This scripted tutorial is nonsense.
Also I'd like to give some constructive criticism about the default chat system. Having two chat systems is very confusing to new players, as the one you start with is very limited and doesn't allow you to see or speak in the /1 channel.
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To be honest I've never been a fan of the tutorial being mandatory for every new character. It never even existed when I started and ever since It's implementation I was always wary of making new characters. I started again yesterday after a few years away from PS and was thrown into the tutorial. Luckily I've played before, so I just constantly clicked through endless nonsense that these NPC's throw at you, even doing this shortcut took me 15 minutes to break out of this annoying feature. Their was two of us in this area and I had to explain to the other person what it was, and told him to read what the NPC's were saying so he could learn the basics of the game. He PM'ed me after finally making it past this nonsense (1 hour later I may add) explaining that he learned a thing or two there but nothing he couldn't of learned after 1 hour of being in the actual game. He still seemed frustrated after making it through and needless to say he logged off shortly after.
I could go into detail but I won't. The fact is I PERSONALLY feel this tutorial drives many people away from the game before they even make it through to the game. I was suprised to see it still even existed. I'd love to see some numbers on how many players quit the game before getting past this feature.
I understand It's value of keeping "wtf is this game and wtf do i do" away fro Hydlaa. But It's implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Thankfully wwhen I started in 2006 it didn't exist, or I know for a fact I wouldn;t of made it past the tutorial. Thankfully the first person I met ingame was Farren Kutter who learned me the basics. This scripted tutorial is nonsense.
Also I'd like to give some constructive criticism about the default chat system. Having two chat systems is very confusing to new players, as the one you start with is very limited and doesn't allow you to see or speak in the /1 channel.
^^^
This.
If I can put my finger on an event after which new players drastically reduced, this will be it. Ever since the tutorial has been introduced new players have sort of become blue moon.
I feel there is no need to make the tutorial mandatory. Instead after a player creates a new character, a pop-up can be shown asking them if they'd like to go through the tutorial. If the choose to, well and good. If they want to explore the world on their own, they should have the choice to do so.
The endless clicking to get to the actual game is probably the biggest turnoff for new players.
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I feel there is no need to make the tutorial mandatory.
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If they want to explore the world on their own, they should have the choice to do so.
The option to skip the tutorial has been available for quite a while (half a year?), along with a few other improvements, such as new starter items (friend's letter etc).
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I feel there is no need to make the tutorial mandatory.
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If they want to explore the world on their own, they should have the choice to do so.
The option to skip the tutorial has been available for quite a while (half a year?), along with a few other improvements, such as new starter items (friend's letter etc).
i'm not sure you get those starter items if you don't do the tutorial. also, the friend's letter and map are both rather useless, now that the map has changed and NPCs move around haphazardly.
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I remember the days when Harnquist's was ALWAYS busy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuA5TlJPTXI
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People like solid ground. As it stands, people have this idea of judging a book by it's cover, so they think of P.S. as a shoddy game. If we could implement more items for role-play, ie clothing, then it would be absolutely wonderful. The problem is the lack of devs. I'm sure that if we got more art devs, then we could help keep some players in. It's one of those visual aspects that people feel. If that were to be fixed? Well, then I'm sure we'd have an increase of overall population, given enough time.
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The dev team should prioritize and get the male and female models of all races ready. With only a handful of selectable models, the first impression of anyone joining becomes unimpressive.
Sad but true.
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I feel there is no need to make the tutorial mandatory.
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If they want to explore the world on their own, they should have the choice to do so.
The option to skip the tutorial has been available for quite a while (half a year?), along with a few other improvements, such as new starter items (friend's letter etc).
I haven't been playing lately (~3.5 years). If I'm not mistaken the tutorial was introduced back in 2007/08? Its quite a long time to get rid of the buggy tutorial.. if not at least the bugs.
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I guess I qualify as a lost player. I haven't logged on in about 6 months, and don't feel any urge to do so. But I am impressed with the PlaneShift project, and would like to see it succeed even if it isn't in a form that engages me as a player. So with that in mind, here is what did (and what didn't) contribute to my departure. No one thing was "the killer", just the negatives outweighed the positive. Please forgive the size of the post, I felt to include just one or two things would give them undue weight.
I think the biggest problem for me was the frustration. It seemed that I couldn't just play, I had to keep asking a guild mate or a stranger how to do something that I thought I should be able to figure out on my own. I know some people claim a "no spoiler" atmosphere forces interaction and in theory builds long term ties, but for me it drove me off.
I don't mind asking for advice occasionally, or if I'm in a chatty or curious mood holding an in depth conversation where I ask how to do stuff. But sometimes I want to just play and the fastest way is to look on-line for a quick answer to my stumbling block so I can get on with it already. As Lehjr said "New players aren't going to stick around if they can't even figure out how to play the game." I couldn't so I didn't.
I also really took exception to the idea that someone else had to tell me how I'd enjoy something most. I'll enjoy it most if I have to learn it all the hard way? I'll enjoy it most if I start out a lackey, running errands for change, and have to work my way up to first class citizen? No. Plenty of other games manage to be fun having first level characters be heroes. And second level. And third level. And up to 100th level. I know that's not for everybody, but Heroism is one of the things that makes a Heroic Fantasy game fun for me.
Derula said "Many of the 'spoilers' should be information publicly available before even joining the game" and I agree but would take it even further, I'd enjoy it more if all of the spoilers were publicly available but some behind "Spoiler Alert" masks. For the people who enjoy the discovery don't read it, and those that enjoy knowing all the facts and looking for interesting ways to combine them can read them. Who's to say jigsaw puzzles are a "better" form of entertainment than Sudoku? Yet PlaneShift could easily be both if everything were public with spoilers clearly marked as such.
Roleplaying *required* - one of the things that drew me was roleplaying *encouraged*, but oddly enough rolplaying *required* made me uncomfortable once I was here. I was afraid to speak out for fear of wrecking somebody else's fun or causing a scene. I don't want to be nervous about playing a game.
The Grind - Wow, the game is grindy, and in a way very unfriendly to new players. To spend hours for a few dozen ore, and then not be able to get forge space to refine it (because somebody running a bot came in after me and could fill the forge before I could place a single ore) and all for a few skill ranks out of 100? or 400? I don't even know, after months of playing I don't think I had anything over 20.
People minding other people's business - This thread has been fairly civil, but some other forum discussions have been a real turn off. The forums are the most public view a potential player has for the game, and since PlaneShift I've read big chunks of forum chat before joining a game. To see people arguing that limits should be put in place so new players can't get X and Y and Z but have to choose one, for example, is the sign of a real problem. It's a video game, it doesn't hurt you if somebody has cool things or awesome abilities unless that enables them to beat you up and take your stuff. If they enjoy collecting it, let them. That doesn't affect me personally because that's not what I play for, but trying to keep someone else from getting something is a sign of an attitude I'd prefer to see left in the real world.
So what didn't bother me?
Well, I didn't mind the graphics - I read books and the graphics there are worse. At least in the books I read. I don't care if the graphics in PlaneShift aren't State-of-the-Art, they are recognizable and my imagination can take it from there.
I didn't mind the tutorial. In fact, I thought it was mostly helpful and if anything would have liked it to provide more information, though I would have liked the rate of information to be much faster - let me click a button to advance to the next paragraph, don't make me wait through long pauses and slow voice.
Bugs - Yeah, I encountered many, but it says it's beta, they didn't bother me. Restart, continue.
Illysia said "I told myself I would stop doing forum dissertations here but oh well. Even if I don't play the game anymore, I still seem to care about it." and that's true for me too. I'm not trying to rant or insult anyone, I'm trying to provide some honest feedback from a perspective I think is difficult to collect data from.
I'd love to see PlaneShift prosper, I admire your hard work and determination.
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To the gentleman above me, there are wonderful sites that provide spoilers, behind masks of course :whistling:
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I'd have to say that judging by the some of the comments, some people have forgotten what it's like starting out in the game as a newcommer rather than just a veteran player starting a new character. The thing is, if you can't maintain a certain number of newcomers, you will run out of players.
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I float in and out depending on my situation with you know this world we occupy. It does confuzzled me why the numbers have gone down. When I started out, way back when, you know when Duraza was a total badass (where he go?) and the DE was total badass (where we go?) and there were players around like Indigo(Another badass, gave me some swords once, was so sweet) it seemed like the RP world was alot bigger, and it stayed that way a while until these past 12 months I guess. And there are great players around still, like the Adani order(Badass, for your information) but it just seems like everythings smaller. And as we can see the number of people around are down which is confusing because the game has never been better(I mean it constantly improves right?), some of the stuff you could do now players would be creaming in their jeans back when I started out.
Like no big changed happened people just slowly left to wallow in their lives and people haven't come to replace them, think Lehjr has a point, gotta have a nice steady number of newcomers. Oh and yeah the grinding, boo-urns to that too much too much man, figure thats my main gripe. Though I offer no solutions to that, that would be too helpful of course.
The only thing I'd suggest is that this game is a little under the radar?Get the good word out there my sisters and brothers!
Anyways enough of this dribble, think I might dive back in with a new character. Wheeeeeee!
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For your information, Durzy poo was never a badass ;D
As far as the size of the RP world.....
it is only ever determined by the brave people who are willing to expand it to others.
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Anyways enough of this dribble, think I might dive back in with a new character. Wheeeeeee!
yessssssssss :thumbup:
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Also remember a lot of the power-levelers (NoD) went to WoW. Possibly boredom of the game and lack of new players to take over older players and keep the guild running. So it's not just RPer, infact RP is probably fairly good at the moment compared to the past couple of years.
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That's a fairly safe assumption, although there were definitly hybrid PL/RPers who contributed a lot too, and with the lack of new imports have left the state somewhat lacking.
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Hey, several NoD members were avid roleplayers and simply left the guild but stayed on PS, too. *Cough*
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I just wanna say...I've had a little break from mmorpgs (you gotta do it from time to time!) but I've been back recently, and I still think this game is total awesome sauce. I'm loving all the new updates and improvements, and there's still soooo much I haven't done. :thumbup:
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Compliments like these just make my day so much better :love: