|
|
|
|
#1
07-17-2012, 08:18 AM
|
||||
|
Quote:
Positive changes were made on R99 insofar as gameplay mechanics go. Unfortunately, the holes were being patched when the ship was already 80% into the water. Communication/transparency has never really existed here outside of Null being open about the resist system. When the server was hemorrhaging players daily from 300 concurrent (January'ish), was when it needed that most. There were a couple of very good patches out of the blue (I think Feb and April), but there has never been any management of expectation/direction or open dialogue with the players. This isn't to say that we're entitled to any of that on a free server, but I'm bringing it up because I think it's fundamental to success with any attempted red server. With a blue server, you can get away with going hands-off. What's the worse that's going to happen -- an item drop isn't in or something? Ice comet does slightly too much damage to NPCs? Red is a different ballgame. It's volatile as hell. Things that would be minor on blue are major on red. Snare landing too much, for example. Kind of a big deal on red. A weapon proc landing too much or bugged - same thing. Rechargeable items. Red also isn't blue where the social aspect of the game can function as well at relatively lower populations (EC hub). The point I'm making here is that red requires more oversight by nature. The player experience is much more fragile, and people will just quit if things go unchecked for too long. One last thing: several of you keep bringing up the exp rate. Lemme say something about that: I personally don't give a fuck whether the exp rate is 2000% or 2% of what was "classic". The only thing that has ever mattered to me was that I'm able to supplement my PvE with more-than-equal amounts of PvP. That is "classic red" in its purest form, and that was not possible for me to do on this server when I played (not even close). I spent ~10% of my overall playtime on pvp, if that. Classic red was getting jumped by five guys right when you dinged level 6. Here, you were usually looking at dozens of hours of grinding and you'd be lucky to encounter more than a few players to fight. This is why I maintain that servers like VZTZ and LoZ are truer to classic 1999 red servers than this one currently is. They increased the exp rate here? Great. Double that. Then double that again. Take the top levels (51-60, or 40-50 -- whatever) and load up the classic grind there. Hell, make it slower. I proposed this months ago. They sort of implemented it with the scaling exp rate, but it wasn't nearly enough. LoZ did this right. 51-60 is classic slow-as-fuck. 1-50 is a breeze. No one gives a damn about solo grinding 1-50 in empty low-mid level zones. It's a conscious design decision that makes perfect sense. Daxum didn't say "you know what I think I'll do here with this red server? Make it really EZ" with VZTZ in 2007. He realized that a server like this wasn't going to have anywhere near the volume of players as what the Zek servers on live did, so he'd have to make adjustments to provide an environment which closely resembled that. Hotzones: same thing. LoZ has them. They work exactly as you'd expect - it makes a low pop server so much better and more "classic" when the # of players in zones is more than single digits. | |||
|
|
||||
|
#2
07-17-2012, 08:28 AM
|
|||
|
Forgot to chime in on 2boxing: I've never felt strongly one way or the other. I actually sort of prefer 1boxing.
But without a doubt, 2boxing does have the distinct advantage of perceived activity. It doesn't matter if there's only actually 1 player for every 2 toons. If I ran a server with a 1 toon limit and my competition was a server that allowed 2boxing, I would artificially inflate my population number at the server select screen. Perception there is everything. | ||
|
|
|||
|
#3
07-17-2012, 09:51 AM
|
||||
|
Quote:
Now after trying it I see this argument is false. Having two screens loaded up actually hurts you on a pvp server when a pvper comes around. It is hard to manage two accounts and cannot be done correctly. If there is a group of 2, being controlled by 1 person, they will most likely let you join as a single or double. When you are raiding people will always take someone playing 1 account over someone elses 2nd account. If someone doesn't want you to join when they just have 2 in the group then they would most likely be the type of player that would solo if forced to just play 1 account. How many times have you been in a group of 2 in a dungeon and refused to take on other members? 2 boxing is a last resort when there is nothing else to rely on. It is having a group for your tank or cleric so that you can play the game with limited time. If you come across a PvPer that is slightly more powerful then you and you are 2 boxing you will wish you weren't. PvPer focuses on the crowd control or healer, player must be focusing on that account the entire time until they die or get away. I get not wanting 2 boxing when the population is booming. I get why people are against it right now because I was, but they are wrong. Some devs get it and have an understanding of what makes a game work, under any population, including how the server must evolve. Other devs know how to copy something that was 13 years ago as closely as they can, leaving one thing out that they can't copy themselves, a population. Sorry but the population is the biggest factor and making some slight changes is the best thing to do. | |||
|
|
||||
|
#5
07-17-2012, 10:38 AM
|
||||
|
Quote:
| |||
|
|
||||
 |
|
|
Hybrid Mode
