Voting incentives and further growth.

[Zephry 162]

As you all know, our population is slowly dimming down back to how it was before the 'The Rise of Karen!' hype.

 

This is merely a suggestion but a way players join servers is either through advertisement or fan sites (like Top of Game). And no, I'm not suggesting forced voting on the launcher as that is improper business ethics (or something like that).

 

My suggestions is to get back our base population:

 

Vote for Coins: I've seen this on other games and servers where a player logins into their account and once on it they can go to a voting section and vote from Top of Game, GTop100 and etc. I believe the same can be done here. With a medium of 100 coins every 12 hours?

 

Voting Events: Like on Official Fiesta, they have these events where if they hit a milestone on their Facebook likes (for example 100,000) they hold a weekend or weekly exp/drop rate boost. I believe this can be implemented with how many votes we got on Top of Games or GTop100. (I remember when we had a drop rate boost back when the server launched after OBT)

 

More Video Events: We had video events before to advertise the game (Core Online) I don't think the prize has to be grand or big, but more of these events should be done to promote server awareness throughout Youtube and other media sites.

 

Thank you for reading. : )

 

[Amor 625]

I've considered voting for coins before but that's more difficult to implement because Top of Games doesn't have a ping back to tell you that the player voted and therefore people will be able to get coins without actually voting. We can do the same for Facebook I guess instead of Top of Games, besides most of the servers on the Fiesta section on Top of Games are fake or have been botted.

 

As for events I will leave that to Clementine, that's why she's here, you should really bug her about it.

[Ghost 70]

Honestly I don't think any of this really matters. The big thing about the server is there really is no economy. Any blue equipment before level 100 with the exception of sets like Sun/Slash are next to worthless unless they are godly statted in which case a perm might be interested, but other then that it's really rare to be able to sell any casual statted gear.

 

The reason this is so problematic is because perms who farm basic gear can't sell it very easily because most people are blasting through early levels and don't need them. These same people that blast through levels will eventually hit the point where they're capped, but also undergeared.

 

This undergeared player then may find a few SL or LN pieces in the market with poor stats just to get the base def and think to themselves "Okay, I can just use these bad gears to farm better ones" but majority of the current capped players are already geared and don't need to farm any instances, making it near impossible for anyone to find an instance PT, and even if they can find one they may often get rejected simply because they are undergeared.

 

So if this player can't find gear after capping, or a party for anything they often will just be afk in roumen or simply quit, make a perm, or other but often times will lose interest.

 

This is where everything comes full circle and the population starts to drop. If perms can't sell their gear, nor find other perms to improve and compete against they lose interest, If undergeared capped players can't find parties or gear and are getting stomped by geared players in every aspect of the game they lose interest, If capped players who are geared have no competition and are simply assumed to be the best without really having any challenge, they lose interest.

 

In my opinion this all stems from the lack of an economy, if there was more depth to it (I.E Scroll Shops/Perm Shops/Capped Shops/Mall Shops/Etc) then there would be more people considering what route they want to take when they start the game and people might have more of a reason to sell/buy things if they knew that they would actually sell and that gold was worth something.

 

The problem is it's extremely hard for their to be an economy when every player has free access to the Item Mall simply by afking, which makes an Item mall market non existent, fast leveling rates make low level blues hard to sell unless the person is a perm, t3 - t5 scrolls would take a lot of time to create just to sell for 50 - 200s while you could just NPC elrues for the same if not more money in the same time.

 

There are a lot of ways to fix this, but this post's already pretty long so I'll stop it here, but as a capped & perm player this is just my perspective on what makes people lose interest in the game.

[Trepidation 3]

@Ghost 

Was confused to why you said "none of this really matters" but then turn around and say it's because of the economy.

More population would mean more people farming, more access to parties, more shops in marketplace, as well as even shops selling CS items, because of there was more people doing more activities, their own CS points could run low and they'd have to resort to buying CS items from shop, depending on how much time they actually spend online. There are some people who can't afk on the game all day to get points. What i'm trying to say is that there's no economy because there's very few players.

Honestly the marketplace could actually be worse then it already is really. I vend all the time and actually make pretty good money, but it all depends on what you're trying to sell. I mainly farm SLs, and OJs, and can make gems in a few hours just from that. I can see how the perm economy would suck right now, because DDM is useless now, DKL still needs the drops to be fixed, thus is useless, and tower is still horrible with the drop rate, thus no one is going to want to make perms. 

Also with the thing about people who are capped and don't need gear making it so they don't run SL, isn't complete true. I guess it also depends on who you surround yourself with, and what they do. I've been able to do SL runs (thought alot of the time I dont need gear) and farm simply for guild and/or profit for myself. 

Anyway I feel like i'm starting to ramble here, but my point in all of this is, is if the population increased, so would everything else, thus I like Zeph's ideas, especially doing the events that reach out to social media. I'd totally make a core related video, though my editing skills arnt the greatest c: would still be fun. 

Edited September 20, 2014 by Trepidation

[Ghost 70]

 

@Ghost 

Was confused to why you said "none of this really matters" but then turn around and say it's because of the economy.

More population would mean more people farming, more access to parties, more shops in marketplace, as well as even shops selling CS items, because of there was more people doing more activities, their own CS points could run low and they'd have to resort to buying CS items from shop, depending on how much time they actually spend online. There are some people who can't afk on the game all day to get points. What i'm trying to say is that there's no economy because there's very few players.

Honestly the marketplace could actually be worse then it already is really. I vend all the time and actually make pretty good money, but it all depends on what you're trying to sell. I mainly farm SLs, and OJs, and can make gems in a few hours just from that. I can see how the perm economy would suck right now, because DDM is useless now, DKL still needs the drops to be fixed, thus is useless, and tower is still horrible with the drop rate, thus no one is going to want to make perms. 

Also with the thing about people who are capped and don't need gear making it so they don't run SL, isn't complete true. I guess it also depends on who you surround yourself with, and what they do. I've been able to do SL runs (thought alot of the time I dont need gear) and farm simply for guild and/or profit for myself. 

Anyway I feel like i'm starting to ramble here, but my point in all of this is, is if the population increased, so would everything else, thus I like Zeph's ideas, especially doing the events that reach out to social media. I'd totally make a core related video, though my editing skills arnt the greatest c: would still be fun. 

 

 

"None of this matters" was directed at the voting incentives/etc, (It's already been done in the past on this server and didn't change much). 

 

I can see why you'd think Larger Population = Better Economy but the reality of the game in the current state is no matter how many people there are nobody will buy anything useless to them.

 

So in theory if the server had 200 players right now it still wouldn't fix the economy simply because things like 50 Blues are so common, elrue can make you easy gold, noone will be in the 55 level range long enough to make use of any blues unless they're a perm, the item mall is free/ingame, and the only market that can exist in the current state is the high level market but even that isn't much of a market, yes you can make gems selling orange jewels for 1-10g, but there is no value in that money after you've finished gearing which is the point I'm trying to make. After getting a set, it's literally free to enhance, once you're fully enhanced there's nothing left. You don't need to spend money, make money, buy, or sell anything unless you want to.

 

In an alternate universe however, where 50 blues were rare, there were no elrue, the Item mall was free but with a limit on how many bundles or items you can purchase a day, and so on, there is now a reason for a player to make a character to actually search for blues, there is a reason for someone to make scrolls instead of elrue, there is a reason for players to try making gold so they can buy bundles from other players, getting a set enhanced won't be as easy, and the end game content that is there will be more challenging than simply afking until you can enhance what you want.

 

Money will be a lot more valued in this economy rather than the first because there is a level of trade going on that is universal, everyone will want scrolls, everyone will want bundles, everyone will want something, and with that demand, prices go up, things get more competitive, and that competitive aspect is what will attract more players, bring back old ones, and keep the ones that are already playing interested. Sadly, I think it's safe to say so many people are already enhanced and there are already so many blues because of the drop rate that there would need to be a wipe for any of this to happen.

[Balance 38]

I'd just like to say, back in January/February..or well, whatever time before Tower was changed, 50 perms were everywhere. A 50 blue axe? 3gem. And 3gem back then actually meant something.

 

But I agree with Amber. Larger population, more people making money, needing gear, more people selling their previously farmed gear (or farm it because now there's a large pool of active people looking for gear)

 

But the problem is that no one needs money, so there's no incentive to farm. 

An example of this is myself. I haven't farmed gear in a long time, I'm in relatively godly gear on both of my chars, have enough money to buy anything I need, PLENTY of mall points as well. At this point in time 50g would get me by for a long time. And even if I saw something I liked in marketplace and didn't have the cash, I could just run to OLT on my WL for an hour or two and I'd be fine. It's pretty simple, no one really needs money atm.

 

Personally I dont think that problem will be fixed unless there was a server wipe (I really don't want that to happen) or the cap raise. As new gear/weapons come out, suddenly people will have a reason to farm, to sell, etc.

 

And I'm not a fair judge of perms, I made a 70 perm in one day (my gear I already had for set switching/other things I found in storage), did DKL, and got bored, really quickly. I personally see no real point in perms, unless they can farm something that my glad can use. And now with the geo skin nerf..there's nothing I need a perm for (that 2.5% dmg/2% aim is really nothing..especially when a geo axe has a slower attack rate than a npc skin).

 

Apologies if I rambled on and didn't really make my point clear, pretty tired while writing this.

[Vanity 74]

TLDR;

 

Voting does help, however, not as efficiently as hoped for. If anyone looks at ToG, they immediately look at the servers with the most votes, so right there they take an immediate interest seeming to "Ok, that server is populated..."... Great, we can get that down. But once they step foot in game, they want stuff to do. So to clear my point, lemme put it this way...

A potential player browses the ToG list... Let's just say Core has 12,000 votes as opposed to all other servers having 10,000... GREAT! Then they read the details.. "Level cap is 105... awesome staff... etc etc." (I really have no idea what it says this is just an example)... They don't just want a populated server with awesome staff. They want a server that will keep them interested.

With level 105 as cap, I personally do believe it's low. Most servers I see are mostly 110+, most are 120-130 if I remember correctly. Forgive me if I remember wrong though. To cap, it only takes a matter of a couple hours or days depending on your availability to play. Most things we do to level, we can typically farm our gear while doing also (i.e: SL, malephar, shadows, etc). Wonderful! Capped in a couple days and geared! Then probably a couple weeks to get some Malephar gear. So let's say 2-3 weeks time to get all of that done.

Now, what is there to do to benefit themselves....? Nothing since everyone already helped themselves for the most part. I think it's not so much the advertisement or player base, but more so what is offered to the players. I believe if raids and dungeons aren't so focused on lower levels and perms but rather implemented towards higher levels, we can make more content for more cap raises/patches as well as making a server that keep the players occupied til the next patch or whatever. 

To sum it all up, I don't believe it's voting that is the main issue towards getting the server populated again. It all has to do with adding more stuff for us higher levels to do. Of course, we have Karen and the new raid, but, in all seriousness, she's a bitch to kill at only 105. (at least that's what I hear. I haven't tried yet with anyone so I'm going off of hearsay) Increase the cap, focus more on making dungeons and raids for higher levels, and I truthfully believe it'll bring a lot of who we lost, back, and then some.

Edited September 23, 2014 by Vanity