Player Retention Report

[Ryloth 4312]

remove nation tax
remove vortex energy use on useless build mats
add purchased creative+fly for nation ROs
add soulstone slots
increase player bank tax caps to 7.5k
end gatekeeping on CAs/magics
remove corrupt and biased staff
encourage irp wars not ooc conflict
rp with noobs

do all of this and the server will destroy rival servers and telanir will see his #roadto500 complete without logging on

[NotEvilAtAll 9926]

7 minutes ago, Ryloth said:

remove nation tax
remove vortex energy use on useless build mats
add purchased creative+fly for nation ROs
add soulstone slots
increase player bank tax caps to 7.5k
end gatekeeping on CAs/magics
remove corrupt and biased staff
encourage irp wars not ooc conflict
rp with noobs

do all of this and the server will destroy rival servers and telanir will see his #roadto500 complete without logging on

A lot of these are lofty goals that Telanir would have to actually log online to even begin progress towards, not to mention involvement from the entire rest of the staff and probably most of the rank and file players too.

 

I'll have to agree with Burnsider on this one in that we need a bit more pragmatic take on how to make the server less terrible. Like how Henry David Thoreau argues for at once a better government rather than at once no government, we ought to argue for at once better takes on server systems, past or present, rather than demanding everything be perfect instantly.

 

@argonian@Cloakedsphere@monkeypoacher@Gaius Marius Obviously, all of us agree that freebuild in some form or another is good and a solution to many of the server's woes such as retention and staleness. However, I think there is room for discussion as to what form said freebuild ought to take and how the staff ought to go about regulating it, for without this discussion the server would be doomed to forevermore oscillate between freebuild and non-freebuild systems as old grunts try to bring the server back towards Aegis and fresher blood complains about roleplay decentralization upon the new freebuild maps.

 

To start this discussion, what is the best way to deal with issues of raiders setting up camp right next to nations/freebuild settlements within areas of freebuild? Is it a non-issue that ought to be resolved by players and not staff, or should there be some form of regulation by staff to avoid sai situation? I personally feel as though there could be some regulation here, but I'm hesitant to return to the old freebuild rules of the 50-block rule as I feel as though that system was not very dynamic and lended itself to OOC bickering.

 

And, to drag the discussion back to the original intent of the thread, what can be done currently to improve player retention, even without freebuild and the world being locked off behind nation owned tiles and OOC nation leader politics? Would another eventline like that of the Athera event be a good idea, or should the ST focus on smaller flavor events? Is Vortex a problem or a part of the solution?

 

[Ryloth 4312]

10 minutes ago, NotEvilAtAll said:

A lot of these are lofty goals that Telanir would have to actually log online to even begin progress towards, not to mention involvement from the entire rest of the staff and probably most of the rank and file players too.

i believe you're under the impression that telanir will log in at all regardless of what people do

edit: also no large changes will occur based on this thread save for soulstone slots because soulstone slots are already a planned change

[Sham404 464]

19 minutes ago, Ryloth said:

remove nation tax
remove vortex energy use on useless build mats
add purchased creative+fly for nation ROs
add soulstone slots
increase player bank tax caps to 7.5k
end gatekeeping on CAs/magics
remove corrupt and biased staff
encourage irp wars not ooc conflict
rp with noobs

do all of this and the server will destroy rival servers and telanir will see his #roadto500 complete without logging on

Removing nation tax wouldnt benefit anything to my understanding, it would just lead to the admin bank running out of money and then people complaining about that.

What do you mena vortex energy for building mats? no building mats need vortex energy to craft

I think this is planned/being discussed to some extent?

Why add soulstone slots? If anything we should be moving away from soulstones as a concept IMO. They have no grounding in lore, and they make it trivial to jump around the map - removing rp on the road of all kinds

It seems like you pulled 7.5k out of nowhere?

agreed on gatekeeping, but please define what you mean by gatekeeping. Do you mean cliques of people who dont share, or do you mean removing applications or something else?

Yes, thats not as easy as it sounds though. Removing staff en masse will lead to shortages if not done carefully

yeah, but how?

and yeah, they are rped with, thats clearly not the base issue/only issue

[Ryloth 4312]

1 minute ago, Sham404 said:

Removing nation tax wouldnt benefit anything to my understanding, it would just lead to the admin bank running out of money and then people complaining about that.

What do you mena vortex energy for building mats? no building mats need vortex energy to craft

I think this is planned/being discussed to some extent?

Why add soulstone slots? If anything we should be moving away from soulstones as a concept IMO. They have no grounding in lore, and they make it trivial to jump around the map - removing rp on the road of all kinds

It seems like you pulled 7.5k out of nowhere?

agreed on gatekeeping, but please define what you mean by gatekeeping. Do you mean cliques of people who dont share, or do you mean removing applications or something else?

Yes, thats not as easy as it sounds though. Removing staff en masse will lead to shortages if not done carefully

yeah, but how?

and yeah, they are rped with, thats clearly not the base issue/only issue

 

1. just revert to arcas market and let people hoard who cares about inflation because we're here to rp, not trade GME (see #4 also). inflation is fixable by capping minas production in voting but lol staff won't regulate that because it cuts votes. economy is constantly borked due to the way minas production functions like a fort knox money printing factory. ultimately its an rp server, and really true value is in iron because iron + good pvpers win wars and land.
2. you use energy to mine blocks bro. nobody wants to use energy mining granite/andesite/diorite/sand lol u gain nothing useful
3. why would you not add SS slots? lol the map is titanic, typically only bandits complain about more warps/ss slots. have you ever walked from warp to elvenesse? who cares about the lore bro we wanna rp not play daggerfall
4. 7.5k because skin artists on the forums make **** all off of mina prices right now, and nobody wants to trade minas for skins because of taxation in cities due to nation taxation. 
5. gatekeeping means people oocly bar you from magics/cas for reasons, which mixes ic/ooc and creates toxic environments, making people waste time when doing the rp for a magic/ca, happens all the time with people controlling lore sects with TAs, always has happened
6. report bad staff, hold them accountable; dont really care about "staff shortages", get rid of bad staff. no excuses
7. discourage ooc bickering over rp conflict, simple as. works pretty well if you just ghost someone confronting you ooc over irp issues. just find them irp to bicker.
8. no they aren't. read the first post and see the issues.

feel like you didnt read the thread but all g. if all of the above were done then the intake of players would likely shift by a 50% margin, because those things were in place (subtracting vortex) when all was well and on an up-tick, per the stats. 

 

 

[NotEvilAtAll 9926]

2 minutes ago, Ryloth said:

you use energy to mine blocks bro. nobody wants to use energy mining granite/andesite/diorite/sand lol u gain nothing useful

I don't remember this being the case. Was it changed recently?

 

I'll check on this later.

[Ryloth 4312]

Just now, NotEvilAtAll said:

I don't remember this being the case. Was it changed recently?

 

I'll check on this later.

seems like it for me but my whole account seems bugged. you break some wood to build a wood house but then you're all out of energy. rip to anyone wanting to rebuild their prebuilds that dont produce rp ig

[NotEvilAtAll 9926]

1 minute ago, Ryloth said:

seems like it for me but my whole account seems bugged. you break some wood to build a wood house but then you're all out of energy. rip to anyone wanting to rebuild their prebuilds that dont produce rp ig

Oh, so mechanically breaking blocks causes you to lose energy? That sounds like a horrific bug and I'm pretty sure that's not intentional. Maybe talk to nick about it.

[Ryloth 4312]

btw like 90% of the server's current problems would be fixed by removing nation tax, or lowering it. after 3 days of voting i can barely buy iron armor/sword and some food so i can safely walk between nations
 

[Shorsand 1744]

30 minutes ago, NotEvilAtAll said:

 

To start this discussion, what is the best way to deal with issues of raiders setting up camp right next to nations/freebuild settlements within areas of freebuild? Is it a non-issue that ought to be resolved by players and not staff, or should there be some form of regulation by staff to avoid sai situation? I personally feel as though there could be some regulation here, but I'm hesitant to return to the old freebuild rules of the 50-block rule as I feel as though that system was not very dynamic and lended itself to OOC bickering.

 

And, to drag the discussion back to the original intent of the thread, what can be done currently to improve player retention, even without freebuild and the world being locked off behind nation owned tiles and OOC nation leader politics? Would another eventline like that of the Athera event be a good idea, or should the ST focus on smaller flavor events? Is Vortex a problem or a part of the solution?

 

Boomer posting again. I am a very strong advocate of more player freedom in regards to creating things/crafting/building within the world, a la freebuild or less strict nations a la taxes. Why else are we set in Minecraft? Elsewise we're just wandering and acting in glorified, stagnant setpieces that look pretty. In response to raiders, frankly there don't seem to be many at all right now to begin with. Conflict RP is good and promotes character development, so long as the parties aren't horrendously attached to their loot or material possessions. I would like to hope in good faith that people wouldn't resort to being lootgoblins constantly, but people also ought to know the risks and rewards of living in a more freebuild area.

Additionally, there could be a sort of "soft nation tile" system, wherein freebuild areas can be interacted with by all, but certain boundaries can have raid limits implemented with a timer, like standing nations have.

 

In the event that freebuild isn't an option, I think an eventline that promotes players working together against adversity would promote more cooperation and interaction among people, both new and old. Harping on the good 'ol days again of Anthos and Asulon, the Blight and Undead were a frequent problem and required people to develop a strong, unified sense of community to combat it and deal with it (both in RP and a PvE/PvP sense). Impending doom is always a good way of bringing people together, and could potentially help coax new players into settlements and communities that have that sense of cooperation and community-mindedness.

[Sham404 464]

9 minutes ago, Ryloth said:

 

1. just revert to arcas market and let people hoard who cares about inflation because we're here to rp, not trade GME (see #4 also). inflation is fixable by capping minas production in voting but lol staff won't regulate that because it cuts votes. economy is constantly borked due to the way minas production functions like a fort knox money printing factory. ultimately its an rp server, and really true value is in iron because iron + good pvpers win wars and land.
2. you use energy to mine blocks bro. nobody wants to use energy mining granite/andesite/diorite/sand lol u gain nothing useful
3. why would you not add SS slots? lol the map is titanic, typically only bandits complain about more warps/ss slots. have you ever walked from warp to elvenesse? who cares about the lore bro we wanna rp not play daggerfall
4. 7.5k because skin artists on the forums make **** all off of mina prices right now, and nobody wants to trade minas for skins because of taxation in cities due to nation taxation. 
5. gatekeeping means people oocly bar you from magics/cas for reasons, which mixes ic/ooc and creates toxic environments, making people waste time when doing the rp for a magic/ca, happens all the time with people controlling lore sects with TAs, always has happened
6. report bad staff, hold them accountable; dont really care about "staff shortages", get rid of bad staff. no excuses
7. discourage ooc bickering over rp conflict, simple as. works pretty well if you just ghost someone confronting you ooc over irp issues. just find them irp to bicker.
8. no they aren't. read the first post and see the issues.

feel like you didnt read the thread but all g. if all of the above were done then the intake of players would likely shift by a 50% margin, because those things were in place (subtracting vortex) when all was well and on an up-tick, per the stats. 

 

 

you dont use energy to mine blocks. if you do report it on the bugtracker, because thats not how its supposed to be.

your issue sounds like a mapsize issue, i would rather see shorter distances than more teleporting around the map. I have had plenty of fun rp with encountering all kinds of things on the road, not just bandits.

thats not really valid. prices change relative to value of currency. They make less mina, but the value isnt the same as if they charged that amount of mina in last map, because there is less mina. This has been explained 100 times since the new map. I spent 200 mina on skins for some roleplay involving another player, so...

i know what gatekeeping means, but thanks for clarifying that you mean the cliqueness of TAs, not the applications themselves.

i dont even know how to start explaining this to you. Getting rid of staff enmasse is a bad idea. Absolutely get rid of bad staff, but dont do it enmasse, that will create more problems.

discourage how though. Its already in the rules not to let IC and OOC dictate eachother. HOW do you discourage it more than making it against the rules?

they literally are RPed with. I rped with every single new player i have seen in RP. I have seen other people RPing with new players as well. These statistics in no place cite "I wasnt RPed with" as a reason for leaving/not playing.

 

[Ryloth 4312]

Just now, Sham404 said:

you dont use energy to mine blocks. if you do report it on the bugtracker, because thats not how its supposed to be.

your issue sounds like a mapsize issue, i would rather see shorter distances than more teleporting around the map. I have had plenty of fun rp with encountering all kinds of things on the road, not just bandits.

thats not really valid. prices change relative to value of currency. They make less mina, but the value isnt the same as if they charged that amount of mina in last map, because there is less mina. This has been explained 100 times since the new map. I spent 200 mina on skins for some roleplay involving another player, so...

i know what gatekeeping means, but thanks for clarifying that you mean the cliqueness of TAs, not the applications themselves.

i dont even know how to start explaining this to you. Getting rid of staff enmasse is a bad idea. Absolutely get rid of bad staff, but dont do it enmasse, that will create more problems.

discourage how though. Its already in the rules not to let IC and OOC dictate eachother. HOW do you discourage it more than making it against the rules?

they literally are RPed with. I rped with every single new player i have seen in RP. I have seen other people RPing with new players as well. These statistics in no place cite "I wasnt RPed with" as a reason for leaving/not playing.

 

not gonna argue w/ you, not worth the time on opinionated ordeals; fixes i listed are tried and tested true save for soulstones and vortex problems, not sure why they were ever abandoned in the first place tbh. just wish lotc wasn't an MMO and instead a sandbox mcrp server like it's advertised

[Sham404 464]

Just now, Ryloth said:

not gonna argue w/ you, not worth the time on opinionated ordeals; fixes i listed are tried and tested true save for soulstones and vortex problems, not sure why they were ever abandoned in the first place tbh. just wish lotc wasn't an MMO and instead a sandbox mcrp server like it's advertised

Okay

Its not arguing to point out that energy usage on building mats is a bug

its not arguing to ask how you intend to discourage IC/OOC bleed

Its not tried and tested to say "get rid of bad staff" with no preparation for what happens if you get rid of a large number of staff

[𝕾𝖙𝖆𝖗𝖌𝖚𝖘𝖍 2236]

Automated applications sound semi-decent, but would have to establish some test of role-play aptitude. Though it is also true that some people even now will write role-play applications to participate in things areas other than role-play such as PvP events and/or grinding. When it comes down to it new players need to be met with engaging role-play events and/or cultures and help their participation and understanding. LoTC needs a solid game design, and while no-one is at fault for it the new players inherit a shaky foundation.

[Cloakedsphere 1462]

2 hours ago, NotEvilAtAll said:

A lot of these are lofty goals that Telanir would have to actually log online to even begin progress towards, not to mention involvement from the entire rest of the staff and probably most of the rank and file players too.

 

I'll have to agree with Burnsider on this one in that we need a bit more pragmatic take on how to make the server less terrible. Like how Henry David Thoreau argues for at once a better government rather than at once no government, we ought to argue for at once better takes on server systems, past or present, rather than demanding everything be perfect instantly.

 

@argonian@Cloakedsphere@monkeypoacher@Gaius Marius Obviously, all of us agree that freebuild in some form or another is good and a solution to many of the server's woes such as retention and staleness. However, I think there is room for discussion as to what form said freebuild ought to take and how the staff ought to go about regulating it, for without this discussion the server would be doomed to forevermore oscillate between freebuild and non-freebuild systems as old grunts try to bring the server back towards Aegis and fresher blood complains about roleplay decentralization upon the new freebuild maps.

 

To start this discussion, what is the best way to deal with issues of raiders setting up camp right next to nations/freebuild settlements within areas of freebuild? Is it a non-issue that ought to be resolved by players and not staff, or should there be some form of regulation by staff to avoid sai situation? I personally feel as though there could be some regulation here, but I'm hesitant to return to the old freebuild rules of the 50-block rule as I feel as though that system was not very dynamic and lended itself to OOC bickering.

 

And, to drag the discussion back to the original intent of the thread, what can be done currently to improve player retention, even without freebuild and the world being locked off behind nation owned tiles and OOC nation leader politics? Would another eventline like that of the Athera event be a good idea, or should the ST focus on smaller flavor events? Is Vortex a problem or a part of the solution?

 

The issues today are that we wouldn't have had to have new discussions on the directions free build should take if we just built and improved on the old system from 3 years ago. Instead of scrapping our original set of rules, guides, and ideas, we should've collectively built off those but its clear the higher ups were hell bent on doing stuff another way because nations complained there were bandit groups building near their nations border (which wasn't against any rules) and that it must've been too hard for moderators to take care of land scarring. Which is an easy fix with tools like world edit and free build. We are now forced to start from scratch. I had to put up a pretty big fight and with the help of the community and polling on yhe forums while I was a GM, we were able to bring free build back. I sadly don't think the current administration team stemming from the very top all the way down have the best in mind for lotc or even care anymore. As I've said, once lockdowns are over for covid, I'm gone again. Lotc has become stagnant due to neglect.