Recruitment Drive

[Sporadic 2844]

Hi Lord of the Craft. No meme title from me today because this is a topic I consider very important. It is about the growth of Lord of the Craft and the unique opportunity we have right here, right now.

 

So the observant of you will notice our landing page and application process have been completely overhauled. The good old application forum has been replaced with a database-backed form that will significantly streamline the amount of steps new players have to take to apply.

Take a look for yourself at https://www.lordofthecraft.net/apply/new/

 

I want to give my warmest thanks to the Application Team for agreeing to give this radically new form a try. I understand this reduced paperwork version means a lot more "bad" applicants will have to be checked by them, leading to (initially) a lot of extra work. However, in the long run we intend to automate a lot of the AT overhead (such as in-game implementation) to lighten their burden.

 

The home page has also been overhauled to help new players find their way and for old players to quickly catch up on news. We hope you will enjoy these changes and find them convenient.

 

Recruitment Drive

Thanks to the amazing work of the builders of Atlas, LotC has been shooting up in the ranks of various voting sites. Indeed, the new map hype has lead to a LOT better results in the January vote resets. Registrations this month are up by 50%. These are great results. Let me show again this graph to show you just how radical these changes are

 

 

But now we need your help. On February first the votes will reset on most sites again. We are up pretty high, but I belief we can go even higher. To do this, we will increase voting rewards for the month of February to reward all the fanatic voters during this month. @Tofuus will soon tell you how exactly we will reward our loyal voters, but as we know form our favorite Dev it can only be extremely exciting.

 

We have slackened a lot of the paperwork in the new app process, including the need to register a forum account. This will, hopefully, lead to a big increase of new players in the month of February. The AT will, as always, make sure these applicants are of highest quality and guide them along. I hope you share my enthushiasm for growth and let's hope things are looking up.

 

Enjoy Atlas, have fun RPing and don't forget to vote vote vote.

[AGP 3169]

The last time we had a voting competition I won and never got my reward cuz the gm who was managing it decided to quit afterwards without giving me my reward and I am still scarred. Also first.

[ImCookiie 1950]

This is very exciting & great data to present to us. I will definitely be voting more often this coming month. 

[Vamoose 265]

@Sporadic ur my favorite dev

[devvy 1348]

great work...!!

[Vaynth 3005]

I'm so happy you went ahead with making the application process better. Nice work.

Edit: pls add this to the slideshow so more people can see it.

[L0rdLawyer 2272]

So how bad is player retention?

[Freischarler 421]

[Gone 869]

Took me a while to figure out the graph, looked like we horribly sank at first glance. 

[Sporadic 2844]

8 hours ago, AGiantPie said:

The last time we had a voting competition I won and never got my reward cuz the gm who was managing it decided to quit afterwards without giving me my reward and I am still scarred. Also first.

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Feels Bad Man. But I trust my fellow devs and I think the rewards will be for true this time.

 

8 hours ago, Vamoose said:

@Sporadic ur my favorite dev

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And you're my favorite world dev :pray:

 

 

7 hours ago, Vaynth said:

I'm so happy you went ahead with making the application process better. Nice work.

Edit: pls add this to the slideshow so more people can see it.

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Good point. Done.

 

7 hours ago, L0rdLawyer said:

So how bad is player retention?

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Not as bad as you might think. Consult also https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/168183-denizens-of-axios-average-players-and-newbie-retention/ where we investigated the matter for Axios data.

[L0rdLawyer 2272]

7 hours ago, Sporadic said:

Upvote

 

Now that I got your attention with my classic player retention question and I did some investigation. I want to ask some questions.

 

Did you know that you sort of need a forum account to deal with a ban report, and ban reports aren't uncommon for new players seeming they are newer to the server and don't actually read the rules. With this, a new player can't get tagged on the forums, can't get easy posting and most of them will never know when they are actually br'd until the GM is ready to make a verdict. Didn't you think of this? There is also a problem with new players actually using the problems to find lore. If there is an increase in players waving around magical sticks with no MA's, it's on you. 

Didn't you think about what is actually on the forums? Ban reports? Lore? And didn't you think that them not needing a forum account will have an effect on who actually views on the forums now?

 

With your application format not needing a forum account, it actually creates a problem with finding players. Many players resort to using the forums to find out some information about a player, and with this new format of yours, it completely limits what these players use it for. I've seen players halt something and go onto the forums, finding out a newer player got sucked into a toxic group and they sit down with this new player to work with him. With this system not needing forum accounts, this process will almost disappear. Another issue is a lot of guilds send forum messages to players, helping them through their application process and use it as a tool to recruit. Nations as well. Without forum accounts being needed, this process is gone.

Didn't you think about how older players use new player forum accounts to actually help players.

 

And one last major issue I really want to ask about Sporadic is alt accounts. Forum accounts were at least some sort of barrier able to help figure out if someone was alting but now with your new system, there is unlimited pvp alts and ban avoiding alts available to the player base now. We had a problem with alts before and this system just hands out whitelisting to these alts.

Didn't you think about pvp alts and ban avoiding accounts?

 

@Sporadic I know the Admin Team forced this change on you in a week. I get it, I'm not blaming you.

But, @501warhead @Harold @Telanir @Paleo, which one of you four is the devil's advocate. Which one of you actually looks at the flaws of the systems you're changing and modifying. If I was to bet on who, one person every few months would mention it and it would be looked at and ignored. Just with this edit to the application format, you created possible problems beyond belief. Who the hell was looking for the problems of your ideas.

 

Also, to the 1000+ players that skipped applying to LOTC because the application process was too difficult. Do you think they really should be allowed on LOTC if you couldn't make a forum account, go to the whitelist application area and post your application? You did this change because you want these players, but does this server really need them if they can't even do that? 

[Adelemphii 1766]

I always enjoy seeing the ways that the staff team come up with to help improve and expand the community, even more so when it comes to refining an application process and it's difficulty. Although I do agree slightly with @L0rdLawyer with the flaws that can be created with what you and many others have just done to the application process, I'm sure when it comes to the alternate pvp accounts as listed above by L0rdLayer that you and the staff team has ways of figuring out if it is an alternate account or not. I sure do know that other servers have that. All around though, good job with working on further improving the community and good luck with the rest of it.

 

Live long and prosper.

[Sporadic 2844]

2 hours ago, L0rdLawyer said:

 

 

First off apply-as-guest was my idea and the Admins are very skeptical. So anyway...

• The overwhelming majority  of BRs are against veterans go ahead try to find 3 recent BRs about members that have been here less than 6 months. Honestly some of us could learn a thing or two from the newbies.
• Crawling the forums to find information about people you're roleplaying with is called metagaming
• IP address is logged when Guest makes a post same as when a User registers I don't know why people think it isn't

[Adelemphii 1766]

edit: how do I delete this comment?

[L0rdLawyer 2272]

6 hours ago, Sporadic said:

 

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1. Most new players are banned in game for on the spot offenses. Which may include power gaming, mass slaughtering of animals, pugsy, and or grief. So what are you going to do, make ban appeals similar to this new system. 

Ban reports aren't uncommon with new players but still occur often enough.

 

2. Crawling the forums and finding how a player has issues with role-playing so you decide go help the kid instead of berate him and call PvP default is not meta gaming. If you consider this meta gaming, i would have a lot more questions for you. And I have seen plenty of guilds and nations base their recruitment off of new players that they message over the forums. Also, well arguing forum accounts, forum accounts are how some players actually help others with their applications. I've seen this done since I have joined the server countless years ago. Removing the need of forum account removes this unadvertised feature of free help learning the ropes of the server.

 

3. IPs are stored when an active forum account makes a status or makes a comment on a post. Removing the actual need of a forum account and the wonderful concept of vpns remove steps of error in PvP alts. When talking to admins, here is what was actually discovered. A player would have one IP when they create their account. A different IP when making their application. And then a brand new IP in game. This helps oust them as banned players which again, with this new system, it removes steps that oust players as alts.

 

Yes there is some possible good to this new feature. But did any admin sit down and play devil's advocate throughout the entire discussion and try to get the others to agree with him. 

 

We aren't massivecraft. If you couldnt figure out the application system before the switch, is LoTC the best choice for you?