Originally Posted by Tradesonred
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People will aggregate, its almost impossible to dodge. What you can do is limit the harm this does to a minimum. For example, on red early on the biggest problem by far was that Nihilum could sit in fear forever, farm for gear that will make them even harder to drive out because no one wanted to eat xp death. What should have happened is guerilla outfits going in and making them work for it, sneaking in kills for a while after wipes, etc... Im quite sure this is the main reason why the server failed. To use your expression, it did not respect players' time. Off the top of my head the solutions dont come up (besides not doing something bad like xp loss in pvp) but im sure there are some and its important to collectively think about them imo and have a post where the pitfalls can be laid out and solutions proposed.
Also, if the server is a huge time investment like red, you develop trust issues with bad management. Why would i waste my time putting in time on a character on a 1X xp server where devs watch the pop go from 600 to 9 at nite without reacting when the fix is easy to implement and clear, nerf xp on a fragile pop server? They clearly dont give a shit about their players, that was a recurring thought in my head from classic to kunark. They give a shit about putting a server up, thanks for that, but it feels like it doesnt go beyond that. It almost feels like something Rogean did for his portfolio, something to show off in RL for whatever IT job hes jonesing for and nothing beyond that. Im sure i wasnt the only player who left during Kunark who juggled and weighted these questions in their heads before deciding to quit for good. Its quite a road to 60 and when you see devs pull moves like the xp nerf or leave the server to rot through their inaction that predictably will lead to a dead server when you do get to 60, i got better things to do with my time.
Its the same exact situation 10 years later, instead of just saying "well never do red 2.0, this is all there will be" as a lifebuoy for the existing population (as it will lead people on the fence to decide to play as there will never be anything else, helping the population grow a little) or "its still coming we just dont know when" so that 1.0 players can make an informed decision if they want to invest time or wait for a new server, people are left to rot. Its a 5 minute thing to do, a respect-your-players-time gesture toward the population thats still playing, but they are not going to do it. They still dont give a shit about their playerbase beyond heres a server, take it or leave it.
With a casual-friendly, boosted xp server, this lack of communication, apprehension of terrible decisions down the line is less of an issue. Like you said, if its fun people will play it. The ruleset either works for you or doesnt and its not a big deal if the plug is pulled on the server out of the blue, which is basically the only advantage i can think of from p99 vs less stable servers. If its not a big time investment, then if something happens you dont like with the ruleset, you can just quit.
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11-07-2022, 03:47 PM
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