Thoughts for next maps community...#2

[Barnubus]

I've been thinking about the differences between Zeal and Dragongarde for awhile now, and I've had some in depth conversations with quite a few people about it, including @Nadastorm @MajorasMask and even @Brutalacerate.

There were differences here and there, but the main one for me would be the way things were so unfriendly during Dragongarde, especially towards our newer players.

When I joined Zeal, I was quickly swept up into @atvrider312 's town, given as much help as needed, they explained to me the classes, helped me learn which class would be best for me.
Then I decided to move on, and made my way to Jericho, with @SM4SHBOX @Photoras @Anonymiter Epicpoodle, zDylann, and many others. And, just as before they helped me, taught me. And hey, it was fun to be part of such a well designed, powerful town, haha.

This map, however, things seemed different.
I see people going begging for help in off topic and tour chat, no one responds in recruitment chat, and veterans kill newer players and raid their tiny little bases, even though they hardly have anything worth the time.

I think new players are no longer seen as potential townies, as someone you want to help.
I want that to change.
We should be noob-friendly, look at them as additions to the server, not annoyances. The tutorial island will help, but I think we as a community need to change, as well!

Also, another point to think about, the server has become 'everyone will attack you, attack them first'
I see people log on, you come across a new player punching a tree and they say hi, instead of attacking. A few days into the server and you know someone like that would be killed so many times they would rage quit, or learn to attack first.



The server shouldn't be 'everyone is an enemy', it should be 'only target my enemies.'
Maybe?



So... What the hell am I trying to say, anyways? Anyone know?
I went afk while making this thread and had a few drinks and now I'm back and I cant finish my thought, bahaha.
Yum, Smirnoff Ice.

Edit: After 5 agrees and no responses I'm wondering if I accidentally said somewhere that people cant reply.
Please do reply, any input, your thoughts, would be appreciated.

 

[Acherous]

Fish Noobs are friends, not food.

But no really I definetly agree with you on this. On zeal I found I recruited and helped way more new players then I did on zeal. I guess people got more picky in dragongarde. I found alot of cool people this way. ^_^

 

[kevinlive]

Noobs NEWBIES.
Noobs are old players that straight out can't play, and have no intentions of learning. Newbs are new players. Learn English! q.q *breaks wall*

 

[Barnubus]

Noobs NEWBIES.
Noobs are old players that straight out can't play, and have no intentions of learning. Newbs are new players. Learn English! q.q *breaks wall*

Well thanks for adding to the general topic in a well thought out and helpful way. Your input was greatly appreciated.
That was sarcasm, by the way.

 

[Fjordsen]

I totally agree, I believe the no-pvp to level 10 will help, but the community gotta do their part aswell.

Personally I've helped tons of newbs getting started trough my Dragongarde town, Canterlot. We constantly answered newbs in Recruitment chat and we usually got 15-25 applicants every week, most of these got accepted and taught the ways of Herocraft. Then maybe half of them actually continued playing and half of them stayed in Canterlot. We were pretty much a starter town for newbs, but when PK-ers noticed, they camped us 24/7 on our new location so most newbs we taught the last months just quit for being killed :/

 

[Fjordsen]

Noobs NEWBIES.
Noobs are old players that straight out can't play, and have no intentions of learning. Newbs are new players. Learn English! q.q *breaks wall*

I learned this the hard way xD

 

[Aryios]

Well we need towns that are good not just Evil & Neutral towns.

 

[kevinlive]

*cough*.
Ok, on-topic.

There will always be someone going about, killing everyone they see.
This is mainly a difference in people, not in our community. We just don't have those kind people on the server anymore, the server is roamed by tc and many others - who just play to PvP.

 

[Barnubus]

This is mainly a difference in people, not in our community.

But these people are the community.

 

[itzmak]

I remember on Zeal it was always a race to recruit the newest member to Herocraft but on DG it was mostly just a group of very closely knitted people making a town and not leaving it/recruiting anyone.

 

[Barnubus]

I remember on Zeal it was always a race to recruit the newest member to Herocraft but on DG it was mostly just a group of very closely knitted people making a town and not leaving it/recruiting anyone.

I remember that as well, some people would even sit in Zeal spawn and wait for new players to log in, since they would spawn in a different area then people who died and respawn in Zeal.

 

[itzmak]

I remember that as well, some people would even sit in Zeal spawn and wait for new players to log in, since they would spawn in a different area then people who died and respawn in Zeal.

Yep, I was thinking about possible rewards a town would receive if they got to an x amount of people but I guess recruiting just so the town can upgrade is enough.

 

[MajorasMask]

Current protection new players recieve:

- Level 10 and below PvP-protection.
- Reading how the server works/the rules.

If they actually read the rules, then they'd know that this is a hardcore server. So for the people that complain that they're getting attacked by older players, they shouldn't. It is ment to happen. Hopefully tutorial island (whatever this is going to be like) will help them. I think PvP-protection below level 10 would help newer players. Many older players look for kills, not to lava bucket someone!


As for the older players, well, that's a part of town/guild politics isn't it? Remember the TC, their motto/belief that it should be ''TC or die''? These kind of evil towns/guilds promote the killing of noobs, or infact, everyone.

I'll say we need more ''good'' towns, but that's been said a million times and nobody really does anything. In all honesty, ''good'' townships nearly never exist because people, citizens within the towns, just go out and slay others.

 

[Jonsoon]

I found Zeal players to have more passive expansion plans. If someone kills you it just set you back a little bit and you continued doing what you were doing.
I find Dragon players to have very aggressive expansion plans. Be the biggest, be the best, be the first. If you aren't with us, you're against us.

 

[Symbolite]

It's because on Sanctum a towns existence was based solely on the number of active members within the town. So people would always recruit any new comers because they wanted to stay active. Zeal this changed but many of the old leaders of Sanctum were still running towns so out of it just being second nature I think recruiting remained popular. Moving on to Dragon, many of the older players are now gone. We realize all we need is money to keep a town going, not activity so everyone just stopped caring about recruiting.

 

[GreekCrackShot]

During Sanctum, I attempted to recruit whoever I could, and helped them out as much as I could. Same with Zeal, maybe on a bit smaller scale considering how tiring it got due to many of my members suddenly going inactive. DG, atvrider and I decided, fuck it, lets get a group of vets together and build a castle and control the East road, killing everyone who walked by.

By doing this the members flocked in, people applying for a town that wasn't even recruiting. This lasted probably for a month or so. Ahh, another thing, what's the point of maintaining a, for example, 10+ active citizen count if the staff don't keep track of the taxes being paid or the activeness of each citizen? During Sanctum, I remember staff such as @Brutalacerate and some other mods reading every citizen list of every town, making sure they were up-to-date every 2 weeks. There's no reason to recruit if all the 10 citizens are technically "active" since audits and taxes are never accounted for.

I think one of the things that causes most towns to keep their community tight-knit and small is probably because most people agree it's extremely time consuming and stressful to manage a town full of noobies. Most of the time working hard with them isn't rewarding at all, because within a week 80% have quit.

Those are just from my experiences. I don't even plan on starting a town next map, simply because it's too time consuming, I don't have nearly as much time as I did during sophomore year. Junior is gonna be stressful as it is.

Here are some suggestions:

• Staff needs to thoroughly keep up with town taxes and audits.
• Maybe some in-game links to @Alator 's quickstart and how to videos.
• Possibly a start off kit of items to get the player started?
• Guides need a more clear job when it comes to helping new players out. Something more than having them join /ch tour and you having to talk them through getting started. TP to new players seems reasonable, just to help get them going.
• I would recommend linking the download for teamspeak 3, so they can join ASAP and get to know some of our friendly community that talk in the ts.

I really don't have an opinion on veterans killing new players. They have the no-pvp until level 10 thing, which should solve a lot of the problems. I'm gonna be honest in saying that I've always had a fun time killing new players. I try to return their items when I have the chance, but it is satisfying to get an easy kill, I don't really understand why, it just is. This map I have around 1500 kills. probably around half were killing noobs. 100 of them were probably killing @cmckenica , another 100 were probably killing @draconis99 . The rest were probably fair battles. What I'm trying to say is that it's almost too rewarding to get noob kills.

So I guess, now thinking about it, a good idea would be to make noob kills not count toward your kill count (meaning upspecs). Also, maybe make unspecs not worth experience upon killing.

Just some thoughts and suggestions, hope they were a bit helpful and not too offtopic (sometimes I get sidetracked when I write like this)

 

[Bingy1218]

This may seem Strange but would like a Guild Protection Agency be worth someone working on?

They gather a number of people and allow anyone in who wants to join.
Each member of this guild will contribute amounts of resources and information to newbies therefore allowing each newby an even chance in getting started
Although there may be many newbies I think each Person who is part of the guild should be involved in the Tour and Help chat, asking every 10-40mins if anyone needs help.
The idea of this guild is to generally make the community more supportive.
Ideas?

 

[jazza411]

I just think people have gotten lazy (I am the worst to talk), not bothering to teach the new players, not getting good at pvp and attacking your real enemies instead getting a assassin kill streak by killing noobs.

 

[Danda]

I think part of the reason that new players aren't seen a potential townys anymore is because of events during last map and this map. With the lack of security options for mayors accepting a new player into you town is a little risky as you're opening up the entire town to them. I can think of many occasions where people have screwed over their town members and stolen everything. While yes this is illegal and the users get punished for doing so but the town that was stolen from doesn't usually get their items back. I think that lack of trust is the main issue here.

• Staff needs to thoroughly keep up with town taxes and audits.

That's being automated. Taxes are already automated in the new herotown build if I remember correctly.

• Guides need a more clear job when it comes to helping new players out. Something more than having them join /ch tour and you having to talk them through getting started. TP to new players seems reasonable, just to help get them going.
• I would recommend linking the download for teamspeak 3, so they can join ASAP and get to know some of our friendly community that talk in the ts.

I think a guide channel should be created on the TS server and be made highly visible so that new players can see it. There should be a guide in there most times of the day and other players should stay out if they're not there to help out new players. Guides would also be given channel admin to help keep people out that are just there to troll.

 

[MajorasMask]

I think part of the reason that new players aren't seen a potential townys anymore is because of events during last map and this map. With the lack of security options for mayors accepting a new player into you town is a little risky as you're opening up the entire town to them. I can think of many occasions where people have screwed over their town members and stolen everything. While yes this is illegal and the users get punished for doing so but the town that was stolen from doesn't usually get their items back. I think that lack of trust is the main issue here.

That's being automated.

Exactly! I remember when D101 was raided by a couple of jerks. I can recall exactly what Neotetro said, or most of it. He told us to ''not recruit anyone''. Basically, we didn't want anyone in our town that we didn't know. It really dropped our activity, and some members left. Hopefully something can be done to change this in the future.