Brainstorming

ynnear

ynnear

Dalayan Elder
so we all know that server pop is low atm, What are somethings we all can do together to help to increase it? Please dont troll this, this is a serious post. I for one would like to bring more players, ive been able to attract 8 new players, well 2 of arent new but have started playing again on a more serious note. Any idea's and or suggestions would be great!
 
server wipe, permanent character death

edit: concentrate character upgrade paths in gear only and eliminate tomes entirely. 65 + 500aa and then needing a charm (ugh) is plenty of grinding for anybody without having 50+ tomes to do.

edit edit: have charms be raid drops.
 
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I think its just about people knowing sod exists. I loved it when I read about it on the wiki....but why didn't I hear about it for years. I hear about other emulated servers recently (the classic style).

I think the content is pretty good.
 
Still a mystery to me why SoD doesnt have more players,I mean its FREE.
Could say the same about an UO shard (Vetus Mundus,German),wonderful content,best TS
system I ever saw in any online game,last I checked it had even only ~25 players at main playtime.

One thing,personally I think the MoP might scare new players away,they may have the impression the rest of the content is as annoying as this,not too mention they have no RS3.
 
My bottom line: Reduce downtime.

Preface:
If anyone plays SoD as well as D3 (or any other recent mmo for that matter), one main difference you'll notice is that there's just a ridiculous amount of downtime in SoD compared to any new mmo.
This is not a "wahh this game is too hard, make it easier" post. This is a "this game has many issues that take too long with too much downtime so if you want to attract and KEEP a stronger player base, reduce the downtime". To be honest, if I didn't have dual monitors, there's no way I could play SoD, there's just too much downtime.

Some raw ideas that could help to alleviate that off the top of my head based on my personal experiences with SoD:
1) Fix bugs that take time: raid tool breaking when people zone, /lfg off bug where people miss a port etc.
2) Trash is boring and takes too long: Instead of a 2 hour clear of trash mobs for mob X, have a distinct pre-boss "event" pull that is higher difficulty than trash, but less time consuming and not loot-oriented. That way it would be about skill/gear level instead of being about staying awake and fighting boredom.
3) Increase out of combat mana regen, maybe similar to nadox, like stay out of combat sitting for x seconds = full mana.
4) Easier transportation between zones: For example, have each boss from a raid zone (or wing) drop a QP. Once you collect all the QPs, you can do a turn in to get a raid clicky teleport (similar to IP clicky, but have it for all raid zones). And similarly, maybe have something like if the person with the raid clicky teleport has been in the zone in the last ~10 minutes, a large portion of the trash is down. So maybe you have to clear the trash until you defeat the zone, but once you have killed all of the bosses, you shouldn't have to clear the trash over and over again each time you come back.
5) Easier replacing raid members: Not sure if it's a client restriction, but something like mage spell/skill that summons anyone to the raid, even if not in zone would be fantastic.
6) Tomes just suck. I understand it gives something to do for people that spend a lot of time invested in their character. I can't think of a good way to remove tomes without screwing over people that put that time in their character, but they just suck! Maybe something like limit the amount of tomes you can get to 1 every 6 months. Or just stop future tomes (except for the most completed one). Just ideas off the top of my head.
7) Instead of having ridiculously rare quest drops, have either difficult fights or have long static spawn timers. I mean spending 80 hours killing greens in Yaralith for my shaman mask was fun and all, but.. yea...


This is not a rant, I think SoD had done a lot of great things and I wouldn't be making these suggestions if I didn't respect all the work put into it. I think overall, this is a better game than the engine it emulates and that's a great accomplishment.

Maybe having lots of downtime is part of what makes the game feel more "real", as well as things with non-instantiated content, and if that's the way it's going to be that's fine. But with newer games coming out I don't think the long downtime games will thrive.
 
"My bottom line: Reduce downtime."
Its fully in your hands if you have downtime or not.

2,4,5
Basically you want insta port to endmob,I save me any comment on this.


" Increase out of combat mana regen"
No,bring back back the old system with no out of combat regen,so that skill matters again.

6
Do I understand this right,you want tomes be removed completly?
Maybe EQ/SoD isnt the right game for you.

7
Yeah,the Yaralith part of the shammy mask is annoying but I remember things from live which
take waaay longer - or you could show some creativity and use the occasion to level a new char
there until the priest pops.
 
Ulandx said:
" Increase out of combat mana regen"
No,bring back back the old system with no out of combat regen,so that skill matters again.
Click to expand...

Yes I agree, going afk to cook some food for 15 minutes while you regen mana takes a lot of skill, bring it back!
 
I honestly think the biggest problem is just that people don't know it exists. i think the content is rpetty good, I worry that skipping to boss mobs faster just means that tiered people will mow down MORE mobs for their alts.

There's a lot of bugs to be fixed, but i think the core principals are good.

Oh, one thing that may help is making the ui set up in a more friendly manner when you start. I advised 4 people to try SoD after i liked it. two shit a chicken when they saw the ui as it was set up by default. is it possible for us to save a profile that is the default for new players? you know, with guild chat in it's own window, the height filter pressed on the map.

Once i showed one of them how i was set up he was more willing to try it, but when he first started he was overwealmed with ugly.
 
defixio came up with an actually amazing point there about new players... I knew how to set up the UI after playing a bit and because I'd played Live. But it would be so much easier to jump in if it was set up in an at least decent way, as it is terrible to begin with. Someone fresh to EQ would be completely lost with it from the UI.

Saying MoP scares off new players - this seems pretty true. Is there any way to make the MoP safe for level 1 - 20?

Restricting new people from experiencing the game is counter-productive. The content as it is is fantfuckintastic, the tweaks will come from the playerbase and not to draw in new people. Class overhauls would be amazing to fix that but for new players... The first few moments / levels are ALL that matter. Maybe with this in mind put a bit more focus on those starting moments... The new zone was great and a perfect example of this, SoD needs to expand not just upwards (with tomes, Ikisith, T12+) but to the side too for lower levels.

Also I think warriors need an explanation in their Dream about how their stamina works, and the wiki needs to be updated to reflect their new mechanics. I see lots of people asking why their stamina doesn't regenerate as a warrior. I would update it myself but I'm not 100% familiar with the whole thing.
 
I think the devs are doing a good job on promoting server health. I think over time the numbers will rise. It may feel like doomsday to the players who have invested 5000 hours into the game but I have loved every hour of it and I think it's just such a great game, you have to try it. I could be majorly out of touch tho too. Either/or.
 
Also, alot of good competition has cropped up recently. Tera, diablo 3, guild wars 2 soon. When the shiny wears off more folks will be back.

Getting to 3.0 and on the eqemu list would also do wonders.

Agreeing with defixio too, default UI upgrade would help keep some new players who get turned off by it.
 
quoting myself (always fun):
"Still a mystery to me why SoD doesnt have more players,I mean its FREE."

quote Hallyjade:
"Also, alot of good competition has cropped up recently. Tera, diablo 3, guild wars 2 soon. When the shiny wears off more folks will be back."

Was more thinking in categories of ten thousands.
I mean why would one want to play a crippled (2 inventory slots in EQ2 comes to my mind,100 AAs in EQ)free to play MMO when you can play SoD or other emus.

----

Thinking more about it I wonder why games like Dwarf Fortress,Crawl and Aurora seems to have 100000s of players,I mean they are superhard to get into and graphics are almost non-existent compared to SoD.
 
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I don't have a solution on how to advertise or whatever but alot of it must be down to it just not being known by people. But I suppose there are countless crap mmorpgs that it can be overlooked too without the correct message / representation idk!

I also agree that more will be back after short-lasting games (D3 etc.) and summer itself!

I searched far and wide for this kind of thing playing so many bad games and now would never look further than SoD it's extremely well constructed, the game.
 
Please don't make the game easier or reduce downtime. This is one of the key elements that made classic EverQuest so much fun, so realistic, and so rewarding and you devs brought that to SoD for sure. Most people (kids especially) are about instant gratification, they want to get to level 65 in 1 day, with minimal effort. I think a lot of the SoD player base appreciates putting in some effort to receive achievement and all the fun that goes along with that. If I am never frustrated (or even angry) with the game I'm playing, it's too easy, too linear, and there is no challenge. I agree with earlier poster, Cesspits was a great addition, especially for new players. My wife has recently started playing again the past few weeks only because I took her to Cesspits and she loves it. I personally think the UI is very intuitive once you get used to it. It's tough to try and draw a line where you want to keep the game engaging, challenging, and fun, but you want to attract new people by holding their hand.
 
Velden said:
so realistic
Click to expand...

what

I wonder if there are two different arguments about downtime going on here.

The one that I think of is from the perspective of raiding. I haven't raided in a long time, but I can remember how tedious it was. It's not that it took a long time--it did, but that was okay. Rather, it's that so much of that time was spent doing nothing. Can't do anything when there's someone with less than full mana, so you wait to med. Someone needs buffs, so there's another 3 minutes making sure they get the right things and another 2 to med up again. A healer died, so now we're waiting 5 minutes for them to get rezzed and DF to wear off, then another 5 or 6 minutes for them to med up. And if you wipe, well, you're not gonna be doing anything for the next 15 to 20 minutes. Waiting, waiting, people could be ready any second, want to get this over with as soon as possible, but of course even when everyone is buffed up and FM someone is inevitably afk. And you know what? They're perfectly justified in being afk. For the last 15 minutes, none of you have really been playing a game at all. Might as well actually do something with that time.

I support shortening downtime from this point of view; hell, the time I'm harkening back to didn't have medding during DF or reduced buff mana costs in raids. Meditate was already sped up once before back in the day, as well. But when it comes down to it, there isn't really anything more challenging or engaging in being forced to wait around doing nothing for 5 to 20 minutes than there would be in being forced to wait, say, 2 to 5 minutes instead. It's really time spent not playing the game.

From the perspective of exping and whatnot I guess it would be different since you aren't necessarily going to med to full between each fight. But, if I changed meditate I'd probably just make it set mana to full if you are out of combat and meditating for two minutes straight. There wouldn't be any increased mana regen before then. If someone in your group is pulling that would probably disrupt it; and in any case, if you're medding for two minutes straight in an exp group with pre-raid gear you probably would have ended up FM anyway.
 
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Zaela said:
what

I wonder if there are two different arguments about downtime going on here.

The one that I think of is from the perspective of raiding. I haven't raided in a long time, but I can remember how tedious it was. It's not that it took a long time--it did, but that was okay. Rather, it's that so much of that time was spent doing nothing. Can't do anything when there's someone with less than full mana, so you wait to med. Someone needs buffs, so there's another 3 minutes making sure they get the right things and another 2 to med up again. A healer died, so now we're waiting 5 minutes for them to get rezzed and DF to wear off, then another 5 or 6 minutes for them to med up. And if you wipe, well, you're not gonna be doing anything for the next 15 to 20 minutes. Waiting, waiting, people could be ready any second, want to get this over with as soon as possible, but of course even when everyone is buffed up and FM someone is inevitably afk. And you know what? They're perfectly justified in being afk. For the last 15 minutes, none of you have really been playing a game at all. Might as well actually do something with that time.

I support shortening downtime from this point of view; hell, the time I'm harkening back to didn't have medding during DF or reduced buff mana costs in raids. Meditate was already sped up once before back in the day, as well. But when it comes down to it, there isn't really anything more challenging or engaging in being forced to wait around doing nothing for 5 to 20 minutes than there would be in being forced to wait, say, 2 to 5 minutes instead. It's really time spent not playing the game.

From the perspective of exping and whatnot I guess it would be different since you aren't necessarily going to med to full between each fight. But, if I changed meditate I'd probably just make it set mana to full if you are out of combat and meditating for two minutes straight. There wouldn't be any increased mana regen before then. If someone in your group is pulling that would probably disrupt it; and in any case, if you're medding for two minutes straight in an exp group with pre-raid gear you probably would have ended up FM anyway.
Click to expand...

This, this, and so much of this. I truly think that downtime during raiding, and the subsequent time commitment to raid under such conditions, is what turns most people off and the reasons lots of people quit. Zaela you the best!
 
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