91 replies to this topic

[Xellie]

So, sticking to the facts here and can we pleaaaaaaase hear from the staff on this matter? I would very much like for there to be no drama here.

 

This here is strictly about WoE 2.

 

So for the past few months, WoE 2 has been the playground of ~ 6 guilds. Never more. One guild will always grow big and others will merge up to fight it, thus making the numbers smaller.

 

With the departure of Wrecking Crew (which we all knew was happening as their return was temporary) and hatebreed, we now have 5 guilds taking part in WoE 2

 

5 guilds, 10 castles.

 

Alliance #1

Valkyrie

Aurora

Alpha n Omega

 

Alliance #2

Valhalla

Immortal Dreams

 

note: Valhalla shouldn't be allied to immortal dreams for WoE 2 as we actually don't have common goals. Which is fine so long as it's fun, but what happens if VH stops WoEing in WoE 2 because we have nothing to achieve there? This is something we've considered for a while and actually did take some WoEs out.

Ideally, VH wouldn't have any allies, but there is no reason or purpose for us to attack ID.

If we were to de-ally them, the fear is that they may quit as Valhalla does outnumber them and they are only and next thing lower down on the foodchain when we don't want to play with the alliance (stressful and requires changing up regularly)

 

So here's a typical result:

 

 

What does this image show?

 

• Well it shows 1 alliance with 4 unbroken castles (we're not going to get into the validity of this for now, as in a normal WoE situation this is feasible)
• 2 guilds that appear to be solo players holding castles.
• 2 other guilds.

I don't want to speak for other guilds, but I do want to speak from the point of view of mine. We play too and we feel that our feelings toward WoE are significant. It affects us and our playing/not playing affects other players too.

 

So some backstory here: A few months ago, we lost interest in WoE as the situation was heading in the same direction we see now. Random castles that are taken have high economy. If a single guild would defend, the server would descend upon that castle and benefit from months of inactivity, increasing the number of OCAs + God parts into the economy.

 

The result? Castle loot devaluation. It's not even worth taking the castles. If people wanted the rewards they may as well just log in at the end, pvm some guardians and take an empty castle.

 

But, solo players can take a castle, why don't you take more? Simply put, if they see Valhalla's name there, they send their allies whilst slamming wherever Valhalla is. If it's a no name, nobody pays attention. (note: Valhalla doesn't mind this, but the knock on effect on the server is the issue.)

 

We spent a couple of months breaking down all the empty castles to try and make WoE valuable again, but it wasn't fun.

 

What happens during WoE?

 

This week was unusual as one of the opposing guilds seemed to take it upon themselves to break down some of the random ass econ castles that appear out of inactivity.

 

Our viewpoint:

The whole server jumps in our castle whilst their empties are defended by guardians and maybe a random champ or sinx. It's been this way any time the wrecking crew players are inactive for the last few months.

 

 

What does this image show?

Empty castles for the most part. Whilst Valhalla defended one castle because hibram/eske precasts aren't fun (and apparently there's no such thing as portal immunity even with gtb equipped), Immortal dreams did stuff. I don't know what they did but I do know they can't fight the whole of the other alliance themselves. I don't even know if they can 1v1 the other guilds due to size/item discrepancies.

And we'd love to help them, but we have our own guild to think about. As  mentioned, there's little common ground between us. We're not interested in Okolnir, we have enough items. We don't care about splitting high econ (or even having a single high econ)... Our goal is very specific and it's amazing we have one at all.

 

Now, I'm not saying that their castles were entirely free. Attacking another guild's castle and trapping them in their hole is a valid tactic. (one I've used many many times), but it shouldn't work on this scale. Nor should one single guild feel obligated to drop everything to break multiple castles.

 

I could wait a couple of weeks and take whatever 100 econ we like! But that isn't WoE. That is PVMing guardians and stones.

 

A breakdown of the problems here:

• If Valhalla was to choose to stop WoEing, the single guild outside of the alliance is %*$!ed.
• The entire atmosphere is incredibly counter productive to getting new guilds involved
• There's no value to the castles, reducing reason or motivation to take part in WoE

 

My proposed solutions:

 

• Divide WoE into seasons through the year. Reset Economy levels regularly to keep things fresh and give guilds a reason to move around. Part of the reason the same castles remain a thing is because a guild doesn't feel its worth giving up a good thing. It would help combat the stale growth of empty castles into high economy.
• Increase economy lost per break to 10. Self explanatory.
• Consider some castle closures. I'd recommend starting with Valfreyja 5 as it's a clone castle, doesn't have a unique drop and sucks ass to warp to. (relocate holder from there to vf3 if it's an issue, but seriously screw that thing)
• Consider adding a second entrance to castles to enforce better gameplay / less portal precasting and a more fun environment.
• Bang guildleaders heads together and tell them to talk it out. A socio-political solution is better than none.

 

 

 

Edited by Xellie, 19 January 2015 - 12:22 PM.

[Viri]

-snip-

 

-snip2-

 

Thread opener requested no trolling and no drama. Kindly post within topic rules.

Edit: Editing out mods changes is not a good idea either.

 

 

Edited by VModCinnamon, 19 January 2015 - 10:12 PM.
Please follow topic rules.

[Xellie]

Look I asked for no trolling. The fact that all the other guilds have quit is more the issue than our overly inflated sense of self importance. When you win, people set you up as the one to beat. That's cool, its fine. We don't want to work with the other guilds either. I personally dislike the way they look down upon guilds who didn't play on Valk!

 

We're not losing, by any means. We're dedicating our time to helping smaller guilds.

 

Regardless, there are lessons we can learn from other servers. Yggdrasil and the end of Ymir. Classic should not be doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

 

Valhalla/myself is not the reason other guilds have quit. Do not turn the fact that we care and want more guilds to play upon us. I have defended the other guilds rights to ally in the face of the other bigger guilds and I stand by that. But empty economy forts producing okolnir etc are extremely detrimental.

 

If Classic players do want more guilds/people to join the server (and by all means this is what they should want) they should consider what a god saturated established server will look like to a new arrival. It doesn't look good at all.

 

And if we could have prevented god creation without creating, we would have. But we had to settle for making items for PVM players to keep the server's god saturation down.

Edited by Xellie, 19 January 2015 - 12:23 PM.

[Misos]

Break alliances b4 woe, reduce guild member cap to 25-man, block god items/mvp cards in WoE SE maps. Problem solved.

[HikariYari]

(WoE 2) I would say temporarily make it 10 econ per break, reduce all current econ to 0, and split alliances up. At least until more active WoE guilds start showing up on the server.

 

(WoE 1) Also, remove that second godly item crap on god item creation.

Edited by HikariYari, 19 January 2015 - 12:34 PM.

[Xellie]

(WoE 1) Also, remove that second godly item crap on god item creation.

 

I didn't touch on this but yeah... with the population as low as it is, I don't think multiple creations is a good idea.

[meli]

Seems a bit late for you guys in classic, sucks that having all the freedom they haven't done changes earlier tbh, but I think the rumors about duping and illegit weapons around didn't help the server either...

[dzmL]

...

 

My proposed solutions:

 

• Divide WoE into seasons through the year. Reset Economy levels regularly to keep things fresh and give guilds a reason to move around. Part of the reason the same castles remain a thing is because a guild doesn't feel its worth giving up a good thing. It would help combat the stale growth of empty castles into high economy.
• Increase economy lost per break to 10. Self explanatory.
• Consider some castle closures. I'd recommend starting with Valfreyja 5 as it's a clone castle, doesn't have a unique drop and sucks ass to warp to. (relocate holder from there to vf3 if it's an issue, but seriously screw that thing)
• Consider adding a second entrance to castles to enforce better gameplay / less portal precasting and a more fun environment.
• Bang guildleaders heads together and tell them to talk it out. A socio-political solution is better than none.

 

 

I agree with resetting economy after a period of time on a regular basis. This slows down the gap the larger guilds create from the smaller guilds, and gives smaller guilds a reason to recruit.

I also agree with the increased economy lost per break, but I'm not sure these two solutions if implemented together will slow the economic growth of castles too much.

On the topic of castle closures, I also think this is a good idea. We already pretty much fight in one castle as it is. Wherever the action is. This just promotes more guild interactions, which is good.

Adding a second entrance will help enforce more strategic game play both with defending and attacking, and I like that.

 

Over all, the state of Classic WoE SE is bad, and it's been getting worse. It has a lot to do with the diversity of playerbase and the daugnting tasks of supplying smaller guilds. And I'm not just talking about items. I'm also talking about knowledge. It's very difficult to take a player who is new to WoE and help them understand it, to teach them how things work and how to play at a competitive level. I think with the proposed changes, this will add more rewards for players who attempt to start guilds, to reward them for teaching, and stimulating the population.

Edited by dzmL, 19 January 2015 - 08:01 PM.

[Gn1ydnu]

Serious mode enabled: I love playing in smaller guilds, even had a few of my own over the course of the years....

My offer to any group of players that wants to learn and will parcially listen... I can help teach "how to fight" and will supply knowledge to answer all of the "whys?". If this is the missing ingredient for groups of players, I can supply this and am willing to work with any group. I don't have time to supply my own group or anything but helping with woe organization or answer questions or build advice or woe theory crafting or anything related to that I can help with.

Drop me a pm if interested.

[6447140714223228143]

There have been multiple discussion threads on Classic's WoE situation...

There have been multiple suggestions to the issues plaguing the current WoE scene...

However, we have not heard much of anything from GMs in response to these specific issues.
Yes, the GMs are probably discussion Classic at length in private meetings - however, at the same time, the lack of transparency makes it seem like Classic is being left to rot.

It is blatantly obvious that the Classic community wants the sever to flourish, individuals who have and continue to log hundreds of thousands of hours into this game have a vested interesting in seeing it grow.
The Classic community, that is left, want CHANGE, we want RESPONSES, we want a TIME LINE.

How frustrating is it to see discussion threads on Classic's WoE situation go unanswered or addressed for months, referencing the 09 NOV 2014 thread.

As much as the Classic want to improve the server, the real power is with you GMs.

Can we simply get a response with what you guys are discussing/planning and when we should expect something to change?

[AlmrOfAtlas]

Serious mode enabled: I love playing in smaller guilds, even had a few of my own over the course of the years....

My offer to any group of players that wants to learn and will parcially listen... I can help teach "how to fight" and will supply knowledge to answer all of the "whys?". If this is the missing ingredient for groups of players, I can supply this and am willing to work with any group. I don't have time to supply my own group or anything but helping with woe organization or answer questions or build advice or woe theory crafting or anything related to that I can help with.

Drop me a pm if interested.

 

What you should do is make a How To WoE thread in the Classic Class Guides section. Benefit those that don't/can't get 1 on 1 teaching from an experienced player for whatever reason.

[needmorezleep]

if you dont feel you can moderate mvp cards disable them in woe

decrease guardian power until more guilds join for se

decrease the amount of players a guild may have in the castle 24 will do fine

break alliances, kick allied players out of the castle via script

if you are unwilling to ban guilds constantly exploiting bugs just remove all their supplies and select 2 random god/mvp cards to randomly permanently delete per offence

upgrade fe treasure to something of good value/use so new guilds can properly get into the game

make creating a god item in fe/se by either the fort you used to enter a guild dungeon or okolnir reduce the castle's economy and defense to 0

add multiple entrances into se castles to discourage portal camping

add supply boxes to major turn ins such as dragons while it may not be as good as a guild dungeon its still something they can do together but make it so if you take a supply box you get no exp

until the population changes reduce se castles to either 4 or 6 

change se emperium breaks to lose 20 eco and fe to 10

Edited by needmorezleep, 19 January 2015 - 11:01 PM.

[AlmrOfAtlas]

*some kind of sassy quip that will force a moderator to respond to me since that's the only way we seem to be able to get moderators onto these threads*

 

Kittens.

[Cinquine]

if you are unwilling to ban guilds constantly exploiting bugs just remove all their supplies and select 2 random god/mvp cards to randomly permanently delete per offence

Would never happen but I like this

[AlmrOfAtlas]

I started one, but there is too much to cover. Easier and more efficant to be social and do it.

 

Actually it would be easier and WAY more time efficient to address everyone at once with a thread.

Edited by VModCoffee, 20 January 2015 - 03:31 PM.
drama

[Oda]

There have been multiple discussion threads on Classic's WoE situation...

There have been multiple suggestions to the issues plaguing the current WoE scene...

However, we have not heard much of anything from GMs in response to these specific issues.
Yes, the GMs are probably discussion Classic at length in private meetings - however, at the same time, the lack of transparency makes it seem like Classic is being left to rot.

It is blatantly obvious that the Classic community wants the sever to flourish, individuals who have and continue to log hundreds of thousands of hours into this game have a vested interesting in seeing it grow.
The Classic community, that is left, want CHANGE, we want RESPONSES, we want a TIME LINE.

How frustrating is it to see discussion threads on Classic's WoE situation go unanswered or addressed for months, referencing the 09 NOV 2014 thread.

As much as the Classic want to improve the server, the real power is with you GMs.

Can we simply get a response with what you guys are discussing/planning and when we should expect something to change?

We're working on a plan/road map to deploy on Thursday to address the short and long term issues the players have raised, including what we are able to change with regards to WoE. Even if there are suggestions we do not want to or are unable to implement we will make sure to have the discussion with you on why. 

[Xellie]

We're working on a plan/road map to deploy on Thursday to address the short and long term issues the players have raised, including what we are able to change with regards to WoE. Even if there are suggestions we do not want to or are unable to implement we will make sure to have the discussion with you on why. 

 

Did a post like this really require over a year, kicking, screaming and suspensions?

 

Well lets just hope we're actually being listened to from hereon out. Classic lost enough players to apathy.

[Xellie]

There's a wiki for that crap, pm kaymaru for info.

 

Now can we get back on topic?

[Viri]

Odds are the people that get coached aren't going to end up as comp, they're going to end up in your guild or allies. Leading a guild sucks, people just want to play with like minded, skilled players once they're reasonably skilled.

Edited by VModCoffee, 20 January 2015 - 03:35 PM.
drama

[etansit]

 

having a coach that will let you learn from your mistakes and help you move forwards. 

 

This. I like the mentorship approach but it can also be put in a wiki it's just incredibly time consuming as well. Both approaches are really. I mean really, everyone in this game can think of at least 1 mentor or person they have helped out, right?

[Xellie]

This. I like the mentorship approach but it can also be put in a wiki it's just incredibly time consuming as well. Both approaches are really. I mean really, everyone in this game can think of at least 1 mentor or person they have helped out, right?

 

We coached guilds in the past and de-allied them.

I have no intention to do otherwise in the future.

[VModCoffee]

Please stay on topic. Drama will just be removed.

[AlmrOfAtlas]

Situation hasn't changed much. Just fewer guilds now so the issue is much more apparent.

 

The propositions that have been forwarded since last year are still viable. All that we're really doing is repeating ourselves again and again and again~

 

Someone just needs to bunch all that stuff up into a megapost and highlight the repetition. It'd be interesting to count how many times people have offered solutions before they're actioned... or so much as acknowledged.

[Gn1ydnu]

Sadly this whole topic, going back to OP, is nothing new. The whole "if VH stops woe'ing what will happen" would just be a repeat of all the other guilds that stopped WoE'ing. Some would go to other guilds and most would stop playing. Looking at Hatebreed and Wrecking Crew as the most recent examples, although there are countless over the course of time. WoE population would just drop more and the people that can't move on (myself included) would just go to another guild. There is no incentive to lead a guild, especially starting a new guild at this point in the game.

 

Some solutions (guild caps, alliance limitations ect) can't be done well others just wont be done, as of yet. 

 

I really like Xellies point on "seasons" for WoE and econ resets. I would do this quarterly and included ranked potters on the reset. 

 

I would think about ways to offer some incentive for individuals or a small group of leadership to influence them to want to create/lead/recruit a guild. I know the usual answer is "blah blah blah its part of the game blah blah". Let's be honest, it is literally a full time job just for the guild and if you want to do anything on RO it's on your own "overtime". 

 

Last thing is, there is a population issue. Almost all of the problems with the current state of WoE could be blamed on a population problem in one way or another. What are the plans or goals into getting more players? How would you do it if people quit already for XYZ reason? How do you get people who have never played RO interested in a 10+ year old game? How do you get pserver players to convert to iRO? Answering the last question would give you the best chance of an actual population increase, sadly. 

[Xellie]

Some would go to other guilds and most would stop playing. Looking at Hatebreed and Wrecking Crew as the most recent examples, although there are countless over the course of time. WoE population would just drop more and the people that can't move on (myself included) would just go to another guild

 

The difference here is that there's no "enemy" to join.

This is the last stand.