We Need You!

[Caelan]

Recently, we have noticed a significant drop in player activity. I know we have had some issues with lag and the shard was down for a while, but I'm not sure why the numbers have gone down so much.

This is where you come in!
We need you, our players, to give us some input so we can come up with ways to make a change for the better. Knowledge is power and we cannot move ahead if we don't know what needs to be done.

Now, a few questions and comments...

Why are players not in the game as much as they have been previously?

Is it a personal issue?

Connection issues?

Real life?

Boredom?

Tell us!

Is there something that staff can do to get you back in the game and actively playing?

Do you want more RP, and if so, are you willing to help make that RP possible for more players to join in on?

Is there a favorite event that you look forward to participating in that isn't getting done as often as you would like?

Do we need something new to peak your interest and lure you out of your homes and out into the wild and wonderful lands?

As most of you know, we do not have a scriptor, so we are limited in what we can do.
However, there is more to the game then scripts and we have been able to accomplish a lot with a little imagination and player input.

Are you voting and getting the word out that we have a great shard and we want even more players to make it even better?

Myrick has put a challenge out there and he will make it worth your time to vote people!

So vote!

Tell your friends to vote!

Drag your friends in the game and take them to Fel and laugh as they get murdered by mobs!

It's all good!

Our numbers are down...let's help get them back up!
Votes for the shard are down...get out and vote so more people know we exist!
New player numbers are down...tell everyone you know that this is the shard to play!

So, give us your feedback and let's get Sylvan Heart busy!

[Cpt_Starfox]

I try to vote on all three sites at least once a day if not more depending hehe 

However, I've not been around nearly as much as I would like... reason being RL stuffs keeps me fairly busy. By the time I do get around to playing a little, it seems like it's already time to get to bed so I can get up for work again and start it all over. To tell ya the truth I'm not sure what staff and the shard could do more than they're already doing. We just finished off part of this holliday season and WOW was there a lot to do and a lot going on - even a little RP     I'd say that it's a pretty sure bet, that there will be pleanty more going on for other parts of the holliday season too. Yall've been doing great so far; I just might need a few more hours in the day hehe.

[Knossos]

I am not too much of an RPer, but I was very interested in trying it when I came to SH.  I love challenges, and even more doing what people though impossible.  Being the first to accomplish something, or show it can be done easily are things I love to think about.  I care more about the theory than the practice in most cases.  I'm still interested in RP, but since many of the people I knew moved on it's harder for me to log in just for this aspect.

I know personally it became pretty boring.  I started signing on with a second wind after being gone because of personal issues for almost 7 months and found little changed.  In fact, many new issues came about.  Features I used often were removed ([point comes to mind), everyone was running around as un-killable, and nothing new worth talking about and nothing new worth archiving.  I started farming materials, and gathering bods, but then I realized "for what?".

SH's "boss" creatures were once feared, but could be conquered in small groups.  Once too many people became un-hittable, the mosters were changed so the only victory strategy was to send waves and waves of (wo)men crashing on them until dead.  Having them slowly tink away at your health, regardless of your armor, changed the way the game can be played.  The problems need to be fixed, not worked around and this is the way that many of the games current issues were resolved.  I realize many people don't really care about this because, for the most part, killing monsters is nothing more than a chance of deco.  This is where I get my fun, and where I find it lacking.  When gear that you can get from monsters, is no longer useful in killing the monsters because of how they damage players, what is the point?  This also goes for the monsters that even the best geared players hit them for 2-3 and they have crazy regen. There is no fun in spending 10 minutes attacking a boss with no mana because you can't regen any.  Bosses health can be increased by 400% (if it doesn't have a fire breath) and increase the damage players deal by 400% by reducing virtual armor, and nothing changes except the fun players have.  Being painful for the sake of being painful isn't something a shard should do in my opinion.

What is the end goal of SH?  Is it for RP, are you focusing on events, end game 'bosses', holidays, a second life, and what are it's priorities?  It's obviously a power shard, but what is Sylvan Heart suppose to be?  In my mind, SH is a good place for everything, but not a great place in many and, in that sense, many people can find something they don't like.

[Cpt_Starfox]

Hmm let's see..

"everyone was running around as un-killable"
Hehe, hardly. Monsters can still kill even the toughest players, but I figure maybe you mean pvp? Ok, even in PVP, when you verse a tank against a tank... what do you expect? lol It's gonna be a long battle and possibly a draw. If you wanna do pvp, get creative There are ways of killing even the strongest ones hehe.

"the monsters were changed so the only victory strategy was to send waves and waves of (wo)men crashing on them until dead"
Well... that is certainly ONE strategy... but certainly not the one I would choose LOL!  Personally, I've seen some of the meanest things out there... and sure the first strategy people tend to use against them is "die a lot and tick at them until you win" ... but I watched that... and I studied the monsters, and I've found new ways of defeating them. It just takes some creative thought and a bit more strategy hehe. The new Shame dungeon is insanely difficult... but it *can* be soloed if you want to die a lot... personally I prefer to go with a partner (Misty usually hehe) and while we still die if not really careful, overall I think we do really well, and we have great fun! (btw, thanks again for that dungeon!).

"There is no fun in spending 10 minutes attacking a boss with no mana because you can't regen any."
That's where massive leech on your weapon comes in handy as well as various leeching skills... as well as having partners to help you. I generally try to let one or two tank the leeching beast while the rest of us use the ole reliable hit, run, regen, hit again method hehe.

"monsters that even the best geared players hit them for 2-3 and they have crazy regen."
There are ways of increasing your damage hehe which I have found useful aginst those monster that I can generally only hit for 2-3 ... Also, again, having a partner(s) helps

"I realize many people don't really care about this because, for the most part, killing monsters is nothing more than a chance of deco.  This is where I get my fun, and where I find it lacking.  When gear that you can get from monsters, is no longer useful in killing the monsters because of how they damage players, what is the point?"
That seriously depends on the monsters you are killing hehe - perhaps you just don't know what drops what? There are some seriously nice and very useful drops out there if you know where to look And I'm talking NEW ones... so, yeah, there's all the good old ones that you know and love, but there are certainly many new and VERY unbelievably good ones out there to be had... *takes deep breath* I'm sorry I can't say much more though in the public forum *sigh* hehe. -edit- Was just thinking..., we can't have *too* much awesome drop gear available... we still gotta maintain the crafters market for such things... I think thus far, that has been done well, there are great pieces of drop gear that crafters could only dream of... but not *toooo* many, and still there are gear needs that it seems only a crafter can really meet. -end edit-

"Being painful for the sake of being painful isn't something a shard should do in my opinion."
I do agree with that, but for the most part, I think we don't have an overwhelming amount of that going on... there are some very painful fights to be had, true... but as I've kinda said above, the pain can be lessened with some extra strategy hehe

I'm kinda like you I guess... I might not always be the first to kill something, but I might well be the first to figure a way to solo it or two-man it hehehe  

[Aderyn]

I fell off the shard for several months a while back, but it was mainly due to a number of personal reasons. Sometimes real life just gets too overwhelming.

The only thing I can say that I am missing right now is that I'm a bit sad that Pet Wars died off at some point while I was inactive, but as I understand it died off due to lack of interest, so I suppose there's no sense in bringing it back if I'm the only one who misses it

[Onari Ithildin]

I do not think it is just you Aderyn that has missed Pet Wars. It is something I enjoyed as my player as well and also something I had thought of reviving. I have spoke with a few players who were interested once more. I know it was also something Acacia always enjoyed.

[Admin Acacia]

Pick a good day and time, and we'll kick it off again.  Probably not do it ever week like old times, but once or twice a month could work so people won't get bored.

[Abbadon]

Kind of agree with most of the points that Knossos has made. I'm going to be talking mostly about powergaming aspect of this shard, because I believe the majority of our players are powergamers atm. (Evident from seeing the RP events, its usually always the same 5-6 people)

There is a very large gap between mobs - from personal experience its either mobs that can barely scratch players to 100% parry mobs to 1 hit fire breathers. Now Im a bit of a powergamer (or was) so I enjoyed challenging myself and trying to solo everything I could. However this inevitably did get boring after a while and I'm really not sure what can be done to fix that seeing as we dont have a scriptor. The way drops are, if you were to draw a graph about uber-gear, it'd looks something like a diminishing returns graph - it begins to get extremely tedious and painful to get to the next stage in better gear which doesnt even really make that much difference, its just for the sake of having perfect gear (powergaming mentality) e.g. getting full mythics or getting a perfect set of runic gear etc. I think the gear aspect has been a little neglected - I say this because there are constantly new "levels" of monsters and dungeons being brought out, however the gear isn't really keeping up with this new level of difficulty (nor are pets) and I think this is making people fustrated. You can talk all you like about strategy and stuff but some people just don't like to think when they play games. They prefer to just whack stuff and let it die, or continously throw themselves at the monster and chip it down. But doing this usually means dying a lot, which usually means people arent going to come back to fight it after they beat it once, which means chances are that particular monster's "uber" drop or deco isn't going to be gotten. Now you could say, "well that's their problem if they don't want to put in the effort to get the drop" - however, I think this stance is causing many players to leave, so we must treat players like customers in a store if you want to keep them here. If you look at people hunting, I think the most frequented places would be certain hunting spots like Chaos, Alaric's Dungeon etc. This kinda shows to me that what people want isn't harder monsters, they want more farmable places, more gold, atones, gear etc. and also for it to be convenient and close.

What else would make it a little more interesting (for me at least if I still played), is perhaps if we had more players, we could have an actual economy, rather than 1 person supplying the entire shard with all the gear or having to go out and get everything yourself. Theres very little you can do with cash other than throw it at stuff at auctions which are rarely held due to low amount of items/players. Also more players would hopefully mean the rise of a bit of guild rivalry which is something I've always been interested in. This doesn't mean it has to be PvP (as much as I love PvP), it could be something like player-set PvM guild events such as, see which guild can farm the most amount of gold in an hour etc. and maybe even some day have a ranking board for the guilds! (probably not going to happen though )

Another thing would be perhaps a wider variety of events. From what I've seen, the odd event that we do get is either a Champ Spawn or paintball which kinda does get dull after a while especially Champ Spawns because once you've done them all it just becomes boring grind. I generally participate in these to help out new players who want to participate or just to make up the numbers. Which brings me onto another topic - new player friendliness. This is a bit of a touchy subject because I've seen new players being completely ignored by some of our older Sylvan Heart players. However we also have people like Link and Misty who even went as far as making a new player starter pack (which is something staffers should probably be doing). But it isn't always our fault, I've also seen extremely rude new players who completely ignore our new player helpers.

Staff wise I think theyre doing a great job but problem is that there are times I see more staffers online than players >.> which really should not be happening. Once again its the player population problem.

Anyways those were just couple of the things that bugged me and I think could be fixed with a bit of feedback and thought.

[Moxy]

Personally I havent been around much lately because of alot of issues in real life going on.  I just bought a motorcycle, and then my 69 chevy broke down (sad face.) My boss is about to transfer so that leaves me picking up alot of extra duty around the station here.

Other then that I would like to point out that this server seems pretty stagnant due to the fact that we do not have a scriptor.  If you GMs really want to get this server going again, you absolutely need to get someone who can script.  The bottom line is this game is over 10 years old and if you want people to keep playing it, you have to be constantly coming up with new ideas, and new changes.  Spawning new monsters isnt going to cut it unfortunately.

[Moxy]

On a side note, I just noticed while looking around on the forums that all of the major threads have several posts with the headline "Crash" in them.  Now I know this server is very stable, but for people looking to join this shard, the forums is their first glimpse of what this realm has to provide.  Checking out the forums as a guest and seeing a whole bunch of Server Crash posts is likely to scare off more then a few people.

[Caelan]

I personally believe that a new player, or an old one for that matter, would be more put off by trying to log on and not being able to but not knowing why.

There's nothing worse then trying to log in and thinking something is wrong with your computer because you can't. Then, you discover the shard is down, but no one bothered to post about it.

Knowledge is power, hence the reasoning behind this posted topic.

[Aesa]

Anyone notice  numbers have been up a bit lately since I started popping in more? Coincidence?....

[Cpt_Starfox]

The power of pink! 

[Aderyn]

Hey, it's no secret that people are attracted to bright colors.

Gotta admit, I never thought of the possibility that all the crash/ISP problem related posts recently could be scaring off potential players.

[Ponch16]

Until i can figure out this issue with windows 7 UO is remaining uninstalled on my computer.