"Ask Not What SoD Can Do for You ..."

Ryst

Ryst

Dalayan Elder
"... ask what you can do for SoD."

I have been wanting to talk to Wold or another admin for a while about this, but instead decided to just post here and see what the community can come up with.

I know there are a lot of people who really love SoD, including many who don't play that often anymore for one reason or another. Well, right now the game we all love needs us. It's obvious to anyone that currently logs in at all, that the server numbers are low. The server funds are also listed as low on the front page. The server needs an infusion of new players and donators. I want this thread to be about ideas that the community can do to help in this endeavor.

I'll start, a few years ago my wife lost her job. As a result we had to stop donating. Now that she has another job and we're more financially stable, we are going to become donators again. Becoming a donator is a good way to support the server.

However, I also want to know how we can grow the server numbers more than anything. So, everyone, post your ideas, even if it's something you cannot do yourself! I am sure we can all come up with, "tell your friends," which we probably all have already done. If someone posts an idea and you think that it's something you can carry out (without breaking any laws or rules or anything), do it!

Thanks for your attention. I look forward to reading many ideas and hopefully being able to take action on some of them.
 
I like your positive tone, Ryst, and I can also highly recommend donating. The biggest perk to me is the dye that comes with Gold status. Don't underestimate the novelty of being able to dye your armor whatever color you please. (I loathed the dull green of my robe for about two years while crossing my fingers through 49 NZ kills to date for that purty purple robe but still have yet to get my grubby fingers on it. However, I found my disappointment alleviated once I donated and realized I at least had the freedom to recolor my tired old robe whenever I feel like it!)

I don't have much in the way of constructive or innovative feedback, but I do hope some good comes of this kind of talk that has cropped up recently. There have been times when I've spent days on end writing documents for myself detailing 100+ tome ideas, outlining dozens of little tweaks and "flavorful" additions to spell lines across the classes, coming up with suggestions for spell name changes to do away with vestiges of Live's lore and replace them with names of SoD figures, and so on. If I had had the necessary knowledge, I would've loved to be a developer so I could get my hands dirty and make my own little mark on this game. I have fun just imagining this stuff even if it's far too trivial for devs to put the effort into or far too work-intensive or whatever, but my love of the server is what drives me. In fact, my entire interest in texture editing only came about thanks to the way Enchanters are handled in SoD, with things like Illusionary Leather and the Shapeshift AA giving me a lot of early insight into how models/textures work despite being a simple player without access to GM commands.

It probably seems naive, but I never have contemplated an "end" to Shards of Dalaya despite knowing that MMOs inevitably go that way sooner or later. I cannot imagine my squishy, dorky, bald Grinkles vaporizing overnight and existing only in the past. I've poured so many countless hours Gnoming around this world of ours and have gained more friends and fond memories than I can count. I am glad to see the big wigs themselves haven't shown the signs of pessimism (or call it realism, if you prefer) that some players profess these days. I don't know what they have in mind, and it's possible that they're preparing for "the end" without letting on, but I sure hope not. No matter what, at least we've all had the opportunity to pal around for so many years -- and all free of charge, thanks to the staff's hard work and the generosity of donators. Meanwhile, I'll remain hopeful that this is just a bit of a slump and that I have many years of Grinkling ahead of me!

Anyway, sorry to go Hallmark on everyone. ;)
 
Based solely on lurking forums and not logging in for a few months, players are already willing to put in work to see their content enhance SoD. Writing quests, editing zone/mob files, brainstorming ideas to change huge aspects of the game... everything short of real coding and implementation. Since there are only two or three people who actually do that stuff for SoD, I don't think there will ever be another expansion or a massive boom of content or myriad player-sourced goodies added to the server again. Maybe one zone at a time will trickle out for a public release. All we can do is really talk about what we want while those few people use their free time as humans to develop this game and retroactively adjust fun items that most people enjoy using. So if new players jump in and see the old players abandoning ship, that's not really a huge vote of confidence. Player retention and player acquisition are both pretty important pieces of the puzzle of a successful, free MMO. Maybe the source should be opened for the players of the server to play around with and see what they can come up with on their own. I know there a few frequent posters on this forum with fun sounding ideas that could enhance the server, whereas it seems the developers are more focused on rolling back the power creep that Marza content created.
 
FinalFantasyVII_Aeris_Body.jpg


No matter how hard you try she's not coming back.
 
Soften the start. I know Shards already has made the start of the game easier than live was but soften the blow a little more would help for new players adding in a little code to check the IP and email of an account and if its the first time that combination (both must be unique to prevent exploiting) are new then the first character they make should get 10 plat to start the game and maybe a little better starting weapon. Then follow this up with at level ten they get an additional 10plat and then maybe at say level 40-50 or whatever they get something (plat/click illusion/a random no drop world drop their class can use) these would be (i think) fairly easy to add code wise and i dont think would cause any exploits.
 
I said it in my other thread and ill say it again, The problem with SOD isn't content, its population....... When half the playerbase would rather 2 box then to group up you know somethings wrong and needs to be fixed. This is the biggest reason people dont play anymore.
 
Expletus:

You are dead wrong on that count. Two boxing is probably one of the only things keeping current people playing, and it was the only thing that kept me forming groups when I did play. Boxed Healer / Tank, grabbed 4 random dudes of basically any class/teir and go do things. Takes forming groups from a 3 hour LFG nightmare to however long it took people to load buff bots and go killing.

But anywhos, I think people are starting to get the idea the stuff is never going to change. Great suggestions have come and gone over the last year or so I been lurking. Hell, I said I was gonna take a break until 3.0 came out...18 months ago or so...and back then it was a timeline of only a few months away.

Either lack of staff ( programmers) or lack of desire to change, spending precious time spent on fixing stuff the player base had no problems with in the first place, posting this stuff seems useless.

Hell..even the little quality of life suggestions like extending certain buff times, or changing buffs from single to group target..stuff that a monkey with access to the SoD.DB could do in 5 minutes took months to even get started.

SoD at this rate is dead. With no evidence of change in the last `2 years, not holding breath for any miracles in the next.
 
Expletus said:
I said it in my other thread and ill say it again, The problem with SOD isn't content, its population....... When half the playerbase would rather 2 box then to group up you know somethings wrong and needs to be fixed. This is the biggest reason people dont play anymore.
Click to expand...

A lot of the 2boxing is done to farm platinum for charms - it just isn't viable to fairly split platinum with the group and get to 1.2mil any time soon.
 
fuwok said:
A lot of the 2boxing is done to farm platinum for charms - it just isn't viable to fairly split platinum with the group and get to 1.2mil any time soon.
Click to expand...
Seems the thing only brought about as a way to remove plat, is the thing driving most to not group, as people 2-box farm cash specifically for it.
 
It definitely isn't lost on me that nearly all platinum is deliberately generated with the intent of spending on the supposed platinum sink. Let's face it, players wouldn't do this kind of monotonous, antisocial & endless farming if they weren't saving for charms.

Rather than merely complaining in this post - here is my suggestion although I have no idea how feasible it is: multiply platinum drops by the number of players in group/raid who are on aggro list.
 
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fuwok said:
It definitely isn't lost on me that nearly all platinum is deliberately generated with the intent of spending on the supposed platinum sink. Let's face it, players wouldn't do this kind of monotonous, antisocial & endless farming if they weren't saving for charms.

Rather than merely complaining in this post - here is my suggestion although I have no idea how feasible it is: multiply platinum drops by the number of players in group/raid who are on aggro list.
Click to expand...

Change mobs to drop 0 coin and instead on death, deposit plat into the characters on the aggro list. Should prevent the "you can come but no split for helping us kill shit" type of thing and would also help ensure that the players getting the $$$ are helping kill the mob? Not sure how popular that idea would be though. Sounds good in theory.

Edit: Daffie has a good point below.
 
I wrote a reply to then thought about it a little more.

The problem isn't just with PP drops, it is with item drops. When farming kaesora for instance, a ton of the cash comes from the thousands of stackable and the BoE items that drop. Upping the PP drop rate doesn't fix that issue.
 
That's a good point. I don't have any elegant solution for that. There could be multiple versions of the same item with multiple vendor prices but that isn't pretty at all. My solution is to put a ton of pp on the kaesora mobs!
 
I last time I stopped playing it was mostly because after 65 everything just takes so long. Any real progression to your char needs a raid or involves hours and hours if not days of camping. Not to mention the charm farm.... I don't really have any brilliant solutions to that.

I know some people just don't want to group with fresh 65's why not change Tier 1-3 zones into 6 man raid zones? could help the fresh 65's a bit.
 
There were a lot of great suggestions posted here, and none really as fantastical and exaggerated as the author was intending. Games are entertainment, and any form of entertainment needs to have the goal of satisfying the consumer. As it stands now, SoD is more work and struggle than satisfaction (especially when the Live nostalgia wears off) and staff needs to find a way to move the bar more towards the latter. The biggest source of satisfaction in MMOs is the socializing that breeds teamwork and camaraderie.

Thus, as SoD constantly discourages teamwork and camaraderie with brutal competition, it just isn't built to compete against today's low time cost, high socializing, high reward MMOs. But if you undo the game's framework, it stops having the qualities we love that attracted us to The Game in the first place.

Easy fixes:
* Make more bounties available per day. Bounties are fun, don't require full groups to hammer out, and give substantial rewards. They don't have the tiring demand of raiding but completing them reaps incremental rewards that players can get satisfaction from. The bounty system needs an overhaul or an expansion or both because it's awesome.
* Revamp low tier raid mob loot to be in line or slightly better than the 55 adepts. This would be better if there were actually enough new fresh 65s to fill an 18 man raid (i doubt there are, even at peak times) but it would encourage them to really group up to try new things instead of sitting scattered LFG. It'd might get more of those new players pushing into raiding and finding something they like there then just getting 65, being refused exp groups, having to do tedious quests, then quitting in frustration.
* Remove the soulbound AA and make all relic buffs soulbound on cast. Remove the cap on SB buffs and replace the SB AA with another stage of the Mental Clarity AA. Buffing is a worn out frankly boring system that does more harm than good that a ton of the problems of time management in SoD stem from. New MMOs have more or less done away with buffs and instead have provided classes a set of short duration buffs (offensive and defensive cooldowns) to manage instead. I don't think you can remove buffs and have SoD stay quintessentially the same, unless a really creative ambitious dev (like Zaela) hit the ground running, but removing the silly SB system would help more than nothing.
 
I think until end game guys stop camping everything for the alts and quests, fresh 65's will get burned out competing for an exp group let alone gear. How to fix? I'm serious, server wipe for any toon made over a year ago. It's progressing that keeps people going. Make everyone start from square one. The full-timers will piss and moan, some will quit, some will make a new toon and get over it. New players will be on a level playing field.
 
The server has changed so much over the last few years. Leeching is common place. People aren't even shy about asking for it anymore. This really IMO is ruining the server. People need to work for their xp. They have to have a chance to die in the encounter. I am probably mistaken, but I remember a time where one needed to be on the agro list (even healers) to get xp.
A lot of spell changes are happening and that is great. The extensions could also happen on the non-relic spells. Stuff like Talisman of Panther/Mammoth or Legacy of Spines (the 64 one) could get some extensions. I really don't see myself ever getting relics just because of the difficulty in getting them. I'm all for a challenge, but I think the 64/65 non relic spells should get some extensions too.
The one issue for new 65s is the old characters that are still around. Tanks that have been retired for 5 years continue to get xp, continue to get better, and will always be used over someone else. This is a huge problem. One can always 2 box their character and some other retired character. I just really wish they could find a way to end this cycle. Lock the account, send an email to the original email asking them to log in and unlock their account. That would get rid of a few of the big names at least clearing the way for some new folks to be able to do stuff.
 
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