91 replies to this topic

[Themes]

There is no incentive to lead a guild, especially starting a new guild at this point in the game.

 

People just want to play the game. There's too many not playing the game things involved for four hours every week right now. It's better than it was, but it's not quite good enough yet.

 

It's the same reason we've been arguing against 100 seals for the last two years. It's a lot of time spent not playing the game, where you could just play the game instead.

[Oda]

The thing about seasons is how can we get people to continue to WoE in the weeks leading up to the reset when they know it'll be erased?

[Xellie]

The thing about seasons is how can we get people to continue to WoE in the weeks leading up to the reset when they know it'll be erased?

 

• To milk every last asset out of that castle.
• To be declared winner of the season.
• Bragging rights.

 

Record what they have done, immortalize their achievements with a little text and a few pixels.

 

If it's something that they know is going to happen, plans will adjust accordingly.

[AlmrOfAtlas]

Seasonal rewards on top of guild loots? ;o

[Gn1ydnu]

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

This is the last stand.

 

It would all be in perspective as far as who to join and what an enemy is. For example, since the last of the major guilds quit I have no "enemy" to fight against. Just log in and have some fun when I have time to.

 

VH leaving, like the hypothetical situation in your OP, would be bad for the server, I agree. I have had similar thoughts when 20+ other guilds have already quit before hand. 

 

However, this might be there last chance to fix this before it is irreversibly broken beyond repair.....

 

I like the part about breaking everything up into seasons, but in your opinion what is that going to do? The damage is done from econs and this would only be damage control. The sheer amount of god parts/useless junk is already in the server. Including ranked list for alchemist would be beneficial and allow a possibility for new guilds I suppose. 

 

Increasing econ lost per break to 10. I would say yes if there were no econ resets and I would leave it at 5 if there are quarterly econ resets.

 

Castle closures have been talked about for ages. It should have been done a long time ago... But then again what will be accomplished by closing castles? Again, the sheer amount of god parts/useless junk is already here. I agree it should be done (for the record a year and a half ago), but at this point I don't see it having a huge impact to "change woe drastically". 

 

The other 2 points I don't have opinions on or forum appropriate opinions.

 

My questions would be, how would these changes increase WoE population or participation? I mean we are lacking tons of players and a lot of guilds, I do not see how any guild leader will read these and say "perfect, we shall return to iRO because econs reset and breaking an emp reduces econ by 10!". I would just want to know why you feel these changes would benefit the current situation in a positive way, which I am assuming includes increasing the WoE population since the lack of population is the root of all the problems. 

 

I do not have the correct answers for the problems, but I would assume that bigger and more drastic changes are necessary to increase WoE population and participation

 

The thing about seasons is how can we get people to continue to WoE in the weeks leading up to the reset when they know it'll be erased?

 

Reward systems. Offer incentives for people and different categories to earn points. 

Edited by Gn1ydnu, 20 January 2015 - 04:22 PM.

[etansit]

Make the stakes higher and the rewards greater the closer to reset. 

[Xellie]

To be fair my thoughts aren't with former leaders, but future ones.

 

edit:

I'm not saying anything new here, this is nothing but my fears being realized. Yes I was against castle closures before the situation spiraled so far out of control. maybe I'm a unique guildleader in the fact that I won't attack certain guilds as a matter of principle. So long as they stay out of the castle I want, don't mouth off, I don't care if they econ, defend or w/e. It was their ability to do stuff rather than forcing them against loaded guilds that I wished to preserve.

 

The reason?

< incoming speech >

Valhalla was that small guild on Chaos. We fought our way up from the bottom as  group of 5 players with no experience, no items vs established alliances and god items, mvp cards etc. The best thing I owned was a sleipnir that took 3 years to make!

 

This is the experience I remember when I look at these smaller guilds. And how scary and personal it seemed when a big guild attacked. How one guild with 2 megs felt like 50 people when they only sent 3.

 

All of the work we had to do outside of WoE is what built our ingame community... our e-family if you will. The more time you have to spend with others doing stuff, the stronger those bonds become and don't lie to yourselves, THAT is the reason  people keep coming back and playing RO. It's the community aspect that is desperately lacking on Classic that is RO's biggest feature.

 

I couldn't care less if we were farming LOD, Hydro, kathy or dragons. Just being able to benefit together and work as a team is what we need more of.

 

I'm side tracked, but anyway.... If smaller guilds think I don't understand... I probably do. I might not know your "exact" situation, but I've been through enough crap to know the feels. Hell, even Valkyrie had me feeling bad for them. Every guild is suffering with population and activity. None of us are what we remember or what we are used to.

 

But we mustn't overlook what will fix that.

 

We can have/make all the god items/mvps in the world, but you know it doesn't matter if there's nobody to use it with. And you'll have nobody to use it with if there is nobody to use it against.

So sometimes its better to put those gods in storage, agree on some more equal terms and make things more fun. That way people will come back. It's not all about just beating the other side. There needs to be another side to beat and if your guild is lacking in activity, you need to take steps to make things fun for them.

 

And that is why Wrecking Crew were actually kind of awesome.

 

We don't have those kinds of leaders on the server now who are willing to look at eachother's situation and say well hey, it'll be more fun for us if things are more equal like XYZ. And I can't speak for others but I don't have all the pserver contacts to inflate my guild at will.

 

So I guess what I'm asking everyone to do is to step back and look at this server look as a new comer and consider what you can do to be less intimidating. Because when I do that right now, I'm reliving that scared 5 person guildleader moment from 2005, when a 6 guild alliance of 40 people each rushed into the castle... every castle I went to actually and I swear there was no way to beat them.

 

tl:dr; Please don't let the server become god/mvp flooded in its downtime, that is a one way street. I can control myself, and I have many, many items to make. Please think before you spam the server with God Items.

 

Please consider limiting WoE 1.0 creations back to one once more or adding a long cooldown. (don't do anything related to econ, we already know its too fubar to play a role in such things)

Edited by Xellie, 20 January 2015 - 05:12 PM.

[isamu999]

I really like the idea of reducing the number of castles. Which castles drop which god item parts can be discussed at a future date but as it stands, like half the castles are never in use. It's either 1 alliance attacking the other alliance or visa versa. While we are talking about castles the GM's can also take a look at DROPS from castle treasure. ATM loot is pathetic except for certain special items at certain forts and god pieces. The rest of the loot literally is worthless, not even worth storing. I think castle treasure needs to be changed to something thats actually useful and that people want.

[Flack]

Since the tide is already flowing there's probably no stop to changes coming to WoE which I personally do not feel need to be made.  As my productive contribution to this thread I don't see an issue with WoE and don't feel these changes need to be made to "save" WoE.  What is most upsetting about the changes being suggested is that as a long standing RO player who enjoys the game for what it is,  I will now be told to enjoy the game based on these specific rules.  This is how you must enjoy WoE for the good of the server and these changes will be enforced without significant research being done as to how most of your population feels about these changes. 

 

Are we doing this to benefit the server or a few guilds? 

Are these changes really what people want? 

How would these changes greatly increase the WoE population? 

How do these changes improve WoE competition from small to large guilds?

Can we test drive these changes and revert them should issues arise? 

 

I think the GM team should look at the above questions and make sure you have definitive answers before making changes like castle closures, loot changes, econ resets, and other things that could help the server or it could just be the dagger that finally brings it down. 

 

That being said I'll be for any changes as long as you can answer the below

 

How do you handle making God Items if castle numbers are reduced?  Will treasures be updated so castles drop multiple pieces that are now missing from lost castles?  God Item creation cannot stop it is a function that keeps WoE alive and keeps incentive to participate.  As a small guild starting out this is a major goal and something that keeps new players wanting to play. 

 

How many castles should you reduce to?  The point made in this thread is all fighting is done in one castle.  How should a small guild hope to contend against any large guild Ex. 5 man vs 20 man?  How does this benefit small guilds?  Wouldn't this just discourage small guilds to fight because they couldn't hope to compete against a large guild? 

 

Why does Econ need to be taken down further with each break?  Doesn't this hurt small guilds more than large guilds?

 

If you reduce castle numbers how do you break small guilds into WoE.  Currently supplies only exist if you take castles and farm the boxes or do Bio3.  Basically reducing castles would inhibit small guilds from ever becoming contenders because the main source of supplies which is in guild dungeons would be repressed.  Can you explain how you would cope with this situation?  

 

If you can answer the above and have a comprehensive plan then I would be for the changes.

 

Secondly, I've seen some requests to the God Item quest being changed to only make one item.  If this is even being considered as a possible change I would not support it unless a new discussion about changing the current God Item creation process is revisited. This benefits no one on the server as the quest is currently contrived.

[Scuba]

 

My questions would be, how would these changes increase WoE population or participation? I mean we are lacking tons of players and a lot of guilds, I do not see how any guild leader will read these and say "perfect, we shall return to iRO because econs reset and breaking an emp reduces econ by 10!". I would just want to know why you feel these changes would benefit the current situation in a positive way, which I am assuming includes increasing the WoE population since the lack of population is the root of all the problems. 

 

 

 

^ + Flack

 

Theorycrafting what strange snowball effects these changes will make is a logical fallacy at best.

 

I'm also tired of hearing about how small guilds and large guilds are supposed to compete with each other. Answer: They are not supposed to. Lemonade Stands don't compete with Coca Cola.

Edited by Scuba, 20 January 2015 - 10:05 PM.

[AlmrOfAtlas]

Yes the status quo has long term potential. Precedent is 100% supportive of this claim. +1.

[Scuba]

The problem isn't WoE the problem is population.

 

selfmoderated

Edited by Scuba, 20 January 2015 - 10:09 PM.

[AlmrOfAtlas]

The problem isn't WoE the problem is population.

 

selfmoderated

 

Yes the game as a whole is fine and more than capable of supporting any population. I agree that, should we secure a larger population, it will remedy the game's current perceived shortcomings that are not a considerable factor as the only problem with our server at present is the lack of a sustainable population. +1.

Edited by AlmrOfAtlas, 20 January 2015 - 10:14 PM.

[Xellie]

Are we doing this to benefit the server or a few guilds? 

 - there only is a few guilds, isn't this question now redundant?

 

Are these changes really what people want? 

 - The current situation has led to mass quits and loss of population on an alarming scale. Is a lack of changes what people really want?

 

How would these changes greatly increase the WoE population? 

- It may not grow the population, but it may prevent a hemorrhage.

 

How do these changes improve WoE competition from small to large guilds?

 - I want you to imagine you're in a small guild, or in another guild at all. Can you tell us why other guilds aren't continuing to play?

 

 

Why does Econ need to be taken down further with each break?  Doesn't this hurt small guilds more than large guilds?

- The devaluation of the loot hurts small guilds more than large ones. Because now if they get lucky with their drops, they ain't worth crap. This is really important compared to those of us who hoard 10+ sets in our storages and just stack up more and more god parts. We have our gear and don't need to purchase more. Income is very important for small guilds! Also wealth gap. There shouldn't be such extensive freebies going on. The concept of econ exists for a reason.

 

 

Secondly, I've seen some requests to the God Item quest being changed to only make one item.  If this is even being considered as a possible change I would not support it unless a new discussion about changing the current God Item creation process is revisited. This benefits no one on the server as the quest is currently contrived.

It's currently not benefiting anybody anyway. Do tell me why you need so many god items to compete with guilds like... The5Origin or Immortal Dreams?

Please remember that in this hypothetical world, Valhalla is gone.

 

 

Think about Iris, Ygg and Ymir:

only a fool does the same thing over and over again expecting different results...

Edited by Xellie, 20 January 2015 - 10:19 PM.

[AlmrOfAtlas]

How would these changes greatly increase the WoE population? 

- It may not grow the population, but it may prevent a brain hemorrhage.

 

Too late. +1.

[Scuba]

Bring back the hall of honor and push people into doing something prestigious.

 

This could be that "season" thing you guys were talking about. Starting in March the top 5 guilds by the end of the month will be eligible for the Best Guild tournament. The guild with the most points (scored by wins + concurrent wins) gets to bypass the first round. The tournament could take place in April and 2 guilds would compete over 1 fort (maybe score emp breaks somehow?) at the end the best guild would be forever known as the spring quarter of 2015's best guild on iRO. This would give incentive to guilds to maintain good turnout for 2 months at least. Prizes and all that materialistic junk can be sorted out later.

[Xellie]

Bring back the hall of honor and push people into doing something prestigious.

 

This could be that "season" thing you guys were talking about. Starting in March the top 5 guilds by the end of the month will be eligible for the Best Guild tournament. The guild with the most points (scored by wins + concurrent wins) gets to bypass the first round. The tournament could take place in April and 2 guilds would compete over 1 fort (maybe score emp breaks somehow?) at the end the best guild would be forever known as the spring quarter of 2015's best guild on iRO. This would give incentive to guilds to maintain good turnout for 2 months at least. Prizes and all that materialistic junk can be sorted out later.

 

+1
 

[AlmrOfAtlas]

Sounds good but I can imagine smaller guilds just merging into the bigger ones for a shot at the prizes unless there's some kind of tier gradation.

[HikariYari]

So who would the big guild fight with those god items they pump out? A guild with virtually nothing just starting out?

 

Does that sound fun to you?

Edited by HikariYari, 20 January 2015 - 10:45 PM.

[AlmrOfAtlas]

So who would the big guild fight with those god items they pump out? A guild with virtually nothing just starting out?

 

Does that sound fun to you?

 

Nah they'll just keep them in storage or PvM with guildies.

[Xellie]

I'm also tired of hearing about how small guilds and large guilds are supposed to compete with each other. Answer: They are not supposed to. Lemonade Stands don't compete with Coca Cola.

 

Forgot about this

 

Scuba, the point is, there are no other small guilds for them to compete with. Take the Valhalla/Immortal Dreams relationship. I like chipotle and ID, but they are not able to fight either valk alliance or Valhalla alone.

At this point I feel morally obligated to stay allied, it just wouldn't be right to take my 30 people and 30 god items up against them. We're having fun fighting up hill vs valk+friends, but that won't last.

 

Valk/Valhalla are a lot more even, they have more mvp cards than we do, and access to about the same amount of gods, attendance numbers fly up and down, but it really goes back and forth. Ideal world? AnO and Aurora suck it up and learn to fight ID alone (which could go any direction) and leave the two V guilds to it.

 

There's no reason for any alliance imo (this is my personal view and feel free to correct me!) just based on the fact there's nobody left for the other guild to fight if either one decides they don't want to play with the alliance.

 

And this is where not intimidating new guilds comes into play.

God items and MVP cards are level 10 Psychological warfare mastery.

 

That's a slight tangent, but it's never been about getting large guilds to fight smaller ones, it's about alliances creating an absence of said small guilds and how the server situation is only going to grow that gap.

 

The hypothetical situation

 

VH quits

ID gets tired of the alliance shenanigans

new guild appears

alliance all have 2759304 god items / mvps, new guild realizes they can't and thus don't bother.

 

The gap there is inevitable, but it can be slowed.

 

THAT is what must NOT happen.

Edited by Xellie, 20 January 2015 - 11:50 PM.

[Flack]

Are we doing this to benefit the server or a few guilds? 

 - there only is a few guilds, isn't this question now redundant?

I pose this question because it's a platform you stand on.  The current situation is hurting "small" guilds that want to fight but can never catch up.  You've mentioned you are doing this for future guild leaders which means that these changes proposed are for the good of the server as a whole and its longevity.  This question is not redundant in my opinion and a very important one that needs to be answered.  Perhaps you could explain why you feel these changes would not detract future users from joining and not result in further population loss because the server decided to make decisions that perhaps not everyone wants? 

 

Are these changes really what people want? 

 - The current situation has led to mass quits and loss of population on an alarming scale. Is a lack of changes what people really want?

 

How would these changes greatly increase the WoE population? 

- It may not grow the population, but it may prevent a hemorrhage.

 

I think there is an over reaction to the decrease in population from November.  A hasty choice to player decline because an alternative to iRO showed up does not make for a good decision in my opinion.  I strongly feel after a few months these players will return to iRO which is the ebb and flow of the game.  Since the November decrease the population is holding at a pretty steady pace which does not indicate hemorrhage to me.  Changes like the ones proposed here could be the thing that drives the server out to pasture.  My warning is to the GM team that this could hurt the server far worse than help it. 

 

[Cinquine]

Are we doing this to benefit the server or a few guilds?
- there only is a few guilds, isn't this question now redundant?
I pose this question because it's a platform you stand on. The current situation is hurting "small" guilds that want to fight but can never catch up. You've mentioned you are doing this for future guild leaders which means that these changes proposed are for the good of the server as a whole and its longevity. This question is not redundant in my opinion and a very important one that needs to be answered. Perhaps you could explain why you feel these changes would not detract future users from joining and not result in further population loss because the server decided to make decisions that perhaps not everyone wants?

Are these changes really what people want?
- The current situation has led to mass quits and loss of population on an alarming scale. Is a lack of changes what people really want?

How would these changes greatly increase the WoE population?
- It may not grow the population, but it may prevent a hemorrhage.

I think there is an over reaction to the decrease in population from November. A hasty choice to player decline because an alternative to iRO showed up does not make for a good decision in my opinion. I strongly feel after a few months these players will return to iRO which is the ebb and flow of the game. Since the November decrease the population is holding at a pretty steady pace which does not indicate hemorrhage to me. Changes like the ones proposed here could be the thing that drives the server out to pasture. My warning is to the GM team that this could hurt the server far worse than help it.

I agree. Said private server is pissing people off and making them quit already.

These pserver trends never last.

[Tecmo]

Classic should just be completely reset and start fresh with the current GM team, drop the classic name makes its feel older than it should and could be some of the reason new people choose renewal

 

On the topic – I like the quarterly Econ reset with a point system. here some ideas i have good or bad

Example: points for holding econ, points castles kept at end of WoE (but points only for 2 castles per WoE which might stop bigger guilds from trying for 3 or 4 forts and allowing the smaller guilds to get a fort)

 

Points then can be traded items (guild sup, god pieces, higher tier equips)

 

Guild treasure can be traded in to a NPC for points or something to get higher tier equips

 

God pieces drop rate should be dropped to a card rate and HE gums shouldn’t be abled in castles (or server in my mind)

 

God items should only last 1 full year and should be removed (so in the long run you don’t get flooded)

 

MVP cards disabled in WoE (to me it makes WoE more even)

[Mischelle]

-snip-

 

-snip2-

I agree with everything in your Post, Viri.

 

Also, Xellie, if there is a problem with the WoE situation it is because nobody is motivated to join it.

 

Nobody is motivated to join WoE because the result of WoE is defined before WoE begins.  If you have gods, you win.  If not, you lose.  And if you have gods but choose not to use them to make it more "fair" you are just sandbagging to make the other team feel better.  "You only won because we didn't even try to play seriously." or "We sent out our J.V. team and you still lost."  those things don't even have to be said out loud for everyone involved to understand what the situation really is, and no satisfaction comes of it.

 

Servers have always progressed toward this point, because guilds who seriously WoE attract players who want to seriously WoE.  Hence, the part of the playerbase that actually wants to WoE, who put real effort into winning, tend to gravitate to a few guilds.  Eventually one guild accumulates a significant advantage in the number of serious players, and begins to dominate the server.  You could substitute "alliance" for guild, of course.

 

There never was an in-game way to beat guilds who attained this critical mass.  Even if such a guild were to lose a castle once, maybe twice, the loss was only temporary.  The guild would come back the next WoE and dominate even more.

 

The "solution" to this situation was always in the metagame.  The guild leadership would have RL issues, drama issues, or just get bored.  The guild would then either slowly evaporate, implode under it's own mass, or perhaps the guild leadership would throw a massive DB party, give away the treasury to the membership, and move on with life.

 

I challenge anyone to name one instance where a server dominated by one guild or alliance changed to an even match or domination by a different guild or alliance under any other circumstances.

 

I don't see you ever quitting, Xellie.  Gravity basically gave you a proctology exam with a cactus and you still came back to support them.  I'm not saying you should quit, either.  Every time I think about iRO I just want the people running it to realize the real problems with the game and fix them, even if what it takes to wake up the dev team is the failure and shutdown of a server or servers.  Your persistence on classic basically heralds shutdown*.  The inevitability of another failed server is just one more opportunity for the dev team to realize what the root problems are, and then to do something about them.

 

*Though were you to disband, quit, or otherwise take a less active role in the server, it would also probably shut down.  If the classic server were a building, you are probably the last structual support for it.