Why Do you Quit?

[LightBringer]

So as I am working on a new server I want it to last infinitely longer than my other server (even though it did reach the 1 year mark)
I would like to have a server people can continually play for years.

So I am asking a rather open question, what made/makes you quit servers?







I will be using all feedback to help improve my server so be as brutal and in depth (or as vague) as you like.

 

[ventus]

What made me stop playing private servers is not one thing but many things.

-Lack of updates.
-GM's going awol.
-Lack of commitment.
-Lack of communication.
-Favoritism.

-Ninja nerf's (subtle nerf's done thinking players wont notice, then saying nothing was changed.)
-Nerfs in general that are added way too late in game. (Older players had already taken maximum advantage, meanwhile newer players are left far behind) -Nerfs that are done that piss off most of the playerbase but are kept just because a few 'favorite' players like it. These are one of the fastest user count killers Ive noticed in my time playing servers here.

-Longevity, most server only lasting about 3-4 months before GM's going awol and returning a few months later with v2, v3 only to repeat said process.
-Stupid mistakes like not keeping proper backups causing players to waste entire weeks worth of exping.
-Rewinds (One of the fastest ways to drop player moral)
-Quality of life changes not being done, sometimes the opposite is done instead.
-Down time (Server being down for extended periods of time really kills the player base)

Will add more as I think of whats pissed me off while playing private servers here

 

[Seanofsmeg]

- Tao content - if nothing there but the euro stuff already been there done that.

- Server future - if I can clearly see the server has a limited future. After a few hours in you can get a feel for the server and content available. If it's clear that there's not much content or enjoyable content then no point in wasting time.

- solo content - somewhere for solo players to progress. I always thought things like sub bosses dropping tokens 100% of time and can exchange them at npc for some of the rewards the big boss would drop. Means more man hours but again a path to progression while soloing

 

[Belle]

I played prim from launch up until about 2 months before it closed.
User dropped a lot when GM(you) went awol, we found out afterwards you got married/honeymoon etc but the players wasn’t told this to begin with... now for your first server Ofc ppl want interaction, luckily you had chris or imo server would of been dead then.
But personally for me it was 2 things, a simple door fix lol.....and the other a friend of the GM turning up an within a week or 2 had better kit than the players had from the beginning, now that could of been all well and good but it just didn’t feel right so I was out.

 

[Skyline]

I started typing what was a BIG message...

But in the end it all seems to boil down to one thing... I get bored.

I'm very much a solo player, as I don't have the time these day other than a few hours in an evening, group hunts are not always possible, so I'll just logon and grind solo with some guild banter to help.
Then I'll join the hunts I know I have time for.

Problem with the above is you quickly get left behind for your group friends / guildies who have much more time to play.

Servers these days don't seem to cater too much for the solo players.

 

[zedina]

No offence but player base literally want to play around the first 3 months when the hype is strong and then migrate to other server.

For instance, Sanjian's server is good, he has lots of content. What stops players to go there?

The QoL and other silly stuff its just dust in the eyes. The reality is that players like to migrate and play where the hype is.

 

[Pete107]

No offence but player base literally want to play around the first 3 months when the hype is strong and then migrate to other server.

For instance, Sanjian's server is good, he has lots of content. What stops players to go there?

The QoL and other silly stuff its just dust in the eyes. The reality is that players like to migrate and play where the hype is.

Don't agree with you on many things but that's 100% true, once hype dies the server(s) start to die off, there's always a server popping up which feeds that hype players desire so much, sometimes you get some players back but usually it's a case of "I'm so far behind now, I cba to catch up"

 

[Chriz]

Hype is definatley a factor, theres no fix for that - player counts will drop off.

Long term play - (for me) if the progession is too fast, the gap between the casuals and the hardcore becomes too great, too fast. As a casual player (full time job/kids/wife) I'll never be competative, but if i get left too far behind I will loose interest fast. There needs to be soft caps between patches, allowing the casuals to make ground to catch up with the hardcores before the next patch unlocks the next easier leveing areas.

Chronicles did this very well, they paced the content absolutley spot on.

Ultimatley we all get burnt out/bored at various points between, tis a hard balance.

Woop 1,000th post.

 

[LightBringer]

Really good feedback, a lot does fall on the GMs and how they operate the server.

@Belle see for that, it was poor release timing to be fair (I mean it was 4 months after release I got married), but I knew the rest of my team could cover it, perhaps I should have conveyed that message on Discord / Forums - didn't think it mattered as we still had the primary coder and Chris to hold the server strong; but for future I think if a team member is going to be 'absent' for an extended period of time, it would be good to make it clear to the players.

As for the door fix, not sure on that one - if it is a fix that got overlooked, I am creating a much more streamlined way to submit bugs/reports etc - as in discord it always gets spammed away.
And yeah, this was a biiig drain on me, the problem is I have logs for everything, and tracked everything.
I tell people what i found in the logs (which was nothing) but people made their minds up before i checked the logs, and wouldn't budge afterwards, which kinda gets onto my next point

Favouritism, if it is actually happening, I do get it is pointless playing a server, but when hosting TPR our team got a lot of flack for a good portion of the adjustments we made, as apparently it was favouring one guild or another when making these changes.
* We made changes and responded to things that weren't balanced or needed adjusting (buffs or nerfs) when they are brought to light; sometimes these things only happen when the items / spells etc are obtained and used, if a specific guild has a mythical spell that is dog ****, we aren't just going to leave it, likewise if there is an over-tuned skill for a guild, and another guilds flags it, we will test it and adjust it if necessary.

As for Solo Play, more and more seem to be craving this - due to other life commitments.
It is an area I am really exploring for this server, to get a better balance between solo and group play, I don't want to punish group play so you are forced to solo as its more efficient, but I dont want people who want to just log on, do their own thing and log off to think they can never get to the 'end game'

I quite like the guaranteed item idea, if you farm enough you WILL get something.
Ontop of that having a Soft Cap in stages allows people to hit the cap, but the casuals to not see them continually run ahead.
>This is where I quite like the concept of a Paragon System (Diablo3/OS) when you hit a soft/hard cap, you can start investing in a point system instead until the cap is extended, giving you only small stat boosts, but means you can farm without it meaning jack.

@zedina agreed that hype is a huge factor, the freshness and competitiveness of new servers is alluring.

However, I also think if you make a server good enough, people will come back to the server; You've been online a year+ and you still retain what I would consider a good UC for that period!
> Again it falls back to, if people rejoin, how can they get back to the "Middle of the pack" (as no one wants to play mir and feel useless in PvP/PvE)

 

[Hercules]

UserCount - for me when “playing” a server is my first turn off... If it’s dropping and ppl are talking then that’s my cue to question the survival of said server. Most GMs call it a day....you was different and credit where credits due you never stopped updating.

End game - and what I mean by that is, if ppl rush to end game and there’s nothing ready to patch in that’s already a big sign it’s not gonna last long. (Have all your patches and items ready even if it means delaying server release by another month to have multiple items and maps already ready)

Discord - It’s the worst but best gaming thing invented, ppl on that mob rule and ruin servers and make it seem like things are massively wrong when there not, if and when I play a server again I won’t be joining the discord I’d rather see updates coming in on LOMCN.

 

[Gezza]

Prims could of lasted a lot longer if you didn’t bring in them events that completely changed the initial low rate design of your server. So I believe exp events etc could be dialled down some what.

 

[zedina]

Hype of a server and the migration of playerbase from one to other it always existed.
Its just that 10-12 years ago the playerbase of actual Mir2/3 or per general used to be x10 more than right now.

Take as example, Chronicles. It had what? 500-600 users online? thats easily 1k-1,5k active every 24h(not a week, not a month).
Did other servers had decent usercount? Yes. Why? Because playerbase used to be bigger.

Did it killed any servers? Probably 1-2.

Nobody cares how long a server lasts. They will just jump from one server to other.
A better example would be OldSkool, what version? the 3rd or 4th version? Did anyone cared? No.

 

[mir2pion]

When exp gets monkied with, which devalues it, also can make some caves useless. I always cringe when I see the posts here about 'exp weekend', or 'exp anything' since that's shouting - the server has problems holding onto player base and or attracting new one. To me, that's like flogging dying horse. Also doubt, it tempts new pple to try the server. Reason is, you are playing losing game as a server owner, once you start on it. It is like that with inflation of anything, in rl as in game.

That's one side of the coin, of which the other is that mentioned above, backpedaling on something that older/original players benefited from.

The two are in a way opposites but can have the same effect.

The second factor is even harder on server makers - it is modeling the server to group playing vs solo playing. Solo also means playing occasionally with one or two friends, or being in guild but still playing essentially solo game.

Also recall quitting a server last year or was it two yrs, can't jog its name, basically the item set was tied to caves and the progression was totally linear, predictable. It went like this - in a given cave level, jewelry items you could get from subs or even mobs, armour and weapon from the KR in there, and that equipped you for the next cave level. If you had problem shaking the boss for the armour and weapon, you went to the next higher cave and harvested jewelry from mobs or subs there and returned to that boss in lower cave, to get the two needed items. I quit when I reached level 200, which meant to be some radical change (different town, area) but which turned out again just rinse and repeat. It felt like being led on by a carrot dangling in front of you on a string.
Makes it easier on server designer to line it all up like that and even makes it fun to play, but only so long.

 

[Hercules]

The Moto is...you cant please everyone

 

[LightBringer]

you 100% can't but its quite intriguing to see why people do, and I can mitigate what I can.

@mir2pion never really saw exp weekends n such like that, its more of a draw people in on weekend(s) you do it to say "hey look you can catch up a bit by grinding it out this weekend" but I guess everyone has their own perspective!

@Gezza in hindsight I would do events differently, I would have put the same effort in (as I was proud of our events) however I think it would be less impactful from a player perspective (they wouldnt be a catch up mechanic)
It'd be like kill Christmas Trees for presents, presents can give gold/gg/gameshop/huntshop items n such.
>But they aren't good exp, so you think "do I want to farm the event or levels, or mix n match)


I think a big thing is trying to stop out of game trading, as it tanks the economy, which in turn makes gold value deplete.
- now it's easier said then done, but would people be put off a server where they heavily enforce a "No Out of Game Transactions" policy?

 

[IceMan]

how can you stop the no out of game trading? so many ways around it.

 

[Pottsy]

For instance, Sanjian's server is good, he has lots of content. What stops players to go there?

Lack of testing. Same reason you lost a good chunk as well lol. It reached a point where players didn't want to progress for fear of being nerfed into the ground. Sanj has things like Burning/Poison etc, i think i went through 3 builds, each time it got nerfed after spending weeks getting the perfect items...lack of testing the impact of the stats, led to wasting time trying to progress. Advantages were also gained from lack of testing.

Lack of testing and half baked implementation is probably what kills off the majority of the servers. We're not talking big time in-depth code change testing...we're talking about, you've changed a mob stat, and couldn't even bother to spawn the mob to double check, kind of testing.

I agree, that most people go where the "hype" is, but really this is due to the players it's attracting. There were entire groups of people not willing to try EuroReborn because it didn't go past 150 players, if the "hype" isn't there (As in the players), then a lot of people won't give it the time...i'm the same, although i don't have quite as high standards as 150 players lol...maybe like 100.

No players, no fights, no fun. But the knee jerk changes and zero offline testing before implementing is what kills most servers and causes most of the aggro.

I think a big thing is trying to stop out of game trading, as it tanks the economy, which in turn makes gold value deplete.
- now it's easier said then done, but would people be put off a server where they heavily enforce a "No Out of Game Transactions" policy?

Literally impossible to do...that's why servers that have any method of purchasing usable items/gold in the game is given wide births, because people with more money than sense will just gain the advantage from the get go.

In terms of players selling to players, you can slow it down by making it somewhat difficult to automate farming of any kind. But realistically if people want to play for the sole purpose of selling stuff to people (There are quite a few around lol), the it's going to happen. Attempting to police it and putting things in the way to discourage it, is only going to damage the player base.

 

[zedina]

@Pottsy regarding lack of testing...

You and your 'elitist' group expect like server owners are some sort of companies that got departments for developing, testing, ticketing and so on.

Lack of testing probably wasnt, ever, when your certain group is on top.

 

[Pottsy]

@Pottsy regarding lack of testing...

You and your 'elitist' group expect like server owners are some sort of companies that got departments for developing, testing, ticketing and so on.

Lack of testing probably wasnt, ever, when your certain group is on top.

If you create a new mob...yes, I expect you to spawn and make sure it does what it's meant to lol.

Like i said...talking about simple ****, not expecting you to be god with coding and get it right the first time...but basic **** that takes you 60 seconds to test? Yes...absolutely.

- Testing an NPC menu works
- Checking a quest hand in works
- Checking the HP/Stats of a mob works
- Checking a weapon doesn't have MC instead of DC

All common lack of testing issues i'm referring to, that seems to happen quite a lot.

You lose your defence when you just resort to saying "your elitist group"...there are a few, that's part of the pull of a server...one group is never "on top", would be boring as fk if that was the case. Plenty of people know you made the rooky error of not testing some very basic implementation, just like others do...no point trying to divert the argument lol.

There were a number of mistakes and oversights on Sanj's crafting system that wern't seen during beta or anything...but given the depth he went to for that system, it's understandable, and when something major got found he was dishing out bans and stat wipes. To expect him to single handedly test every recipe, what can be broken down, what can be upgraded, could be a daunting task, obviously he would miss something...in my eyes, it then falls to the players responsibility to report it (Which we know doesn't happen lol).

Maybe on top of lack of testing, we should also add lack of owning up to cock ups by the owners? But I don't think that would be fair...Sanj and others i know have held their hands up happily about their mistakes...you seem to be on the full defensive.

 

[LightBringer]

If you create a new mob...yes, I expect you to spawn and make sure it does what it's meant to lol.

Like i said...talking about simple ****, not expecting you to be god with coding and get it right the first time...but basic **** that takes you 60 seconds to test? Yes...absolutely.

- Testing an NPC menu works
- Checking a quest hand in works
- Checking the HP/Stats of a mob works
- Checking a weapon doesn't have MC instead of DC

All common lack of testing issues i'm referring to, that seems to happen quite a lot.

You lose your defence when you just resort to saying "your elitist group"...there are a few, that's part of the pull of a server...one group is never "on top", would be boring as fk if that was the case. Plenty of people know you made the rooky error of not testing some very basic implementation, just like others do...no point trying to divert the argument lol.

I agree it tends to be the smaller 'infractions' that pile up to become a bigger problem

Personally, If I am playing a server and they add a massive new feature but it has some teething issues you can shrug it off, as they aren't a full team of devs with 24/7 to be able to commit to testing.

But if a mobs death frames are out, NPC scripts dont work, mobs incorrectly (or not statted) I agree do pile up.
It makes the server feel very rushed and unfinished as they are small things but it tends to be what a lot of players notice.