Brainstorming: Help Please

[azurerogue]

Okay, let's start this conversation over. After a talk in-game about the current WoE situation I want to try to have a real productive conversation about changes people want to see.

Here will be the common starting points to begin our discussion:

1. WoE is pretty stale lately - everyone who WoEs can agree with this. Even if you ENJOY WoE you have to agree that it's the same routine every time.

2. One way to improve WoE, perhaps the only way to improve WoE, is to get more people to participate (either new server members OR current members who don't WoE).

3. WoE is meant to be a competition.

4. The rewards for WoE should be justification in and of themselves. WoE points are nice, but they should neither justify participation nor reward beyond the benefits of holding a castle.

There might be more, but I'm tired.

So let's start - how do we get more people interested in WoE?

The old argument that wings drive people away might be partially true - but while wings CAN be very powerful they have downsides and are only abuse-able in certain situations.

My first suggestion is to make it more enticing for new guilds to join as a group. I know people might object, but I would be fine with a guild rewards package that included (slightly nerfed) WoE gear, or consumables en masse, or both. I'm aware this could be abuse OR would require a lot of extra work for verifying by GMs - but it's a start.

Even though others support it, I don't think reducing the number of castles is the way to go. I know, as stated in my intro, that WoE should be a competition - but allowing more castles allows for more defense. Defense, even if easily broken by veteran guilds, is easier than attacking. Let guilds build up by TRYING to defend and failing rather than forcing them to attack and fail.

Get real BG and offer new guilds BG points as their incentive for moving here. This addressed my first suggestion as well as a major point of stagnation we have as a server.

That's all I've got. But in game I said that you either work for change or don't complain when things are the same. Here's my attempt. My only request is that we PLEASE keep things civil. You can disagree with me (or others) all you want. Just keep it clean and use logic/reasoning to debate what we should do. Maybe things can get better!

[?Time to Dance?]

We needed to reduce the number of castles to one a month ago before most of the decent players here got fed up with Carebear town and left with both DoE and 4srs. That's all there is to it.
I'm not going to write a novel about why one castle was the only thing that would work like I was going to on the other thread about how the server population was decreasing. I have seen that the GMs will not listen to the only people who should actually have a say in the matter and leave WoE matters up to social players.
At this point RO is old enough that new player flow will be stagnant, and the chances of any new players actually establishing themselves here is incredibly low. I suggest enjoying as much werewolf and low-tier MvPing (or whatever the hell social players here are doing) as you can before the server shrivels up and dies.

[Gojira]

I think we have to look out of WoE first. I agree at 100% regarding guild packages.

At this point, the best way to revive woe would be for a group of players to come here and try their chance and the best way to lure that group of players if a guild package. No need to offer them completely over the top gears but give them a head start so that they won't be farming for 6 months because another guild will leave before they're even ready and then the whole process will have been a waste.

Also, a group of players who worked together before would be much better prepared to handle mvps cards and such because the best way to stop a single individual with those cards is to kill him via teamwork.

You already know I disagree on the current ratio of castle/serious guilds. I still think we should at least lower to 2 so that 1 of the castle has competition until the end, not just each guild sitting in it's castle for the last 15 minutes.

Now, here comes the demands where I get crucified (Maybe I'll get that treatment for the castle reduction thing but people heard it so often that I don't think they'll bother replying to it much), we NEED the bg update to obtain official bg.

What do WoE players do out of WoE when they want action? That's right, they bg. Right now, we only have ONE available BG that isn't even spammable which is a big thumbs down for pvp/WoE oriented players.

Also, alot of server seems to use the following feature: Add consumables for points from bg. It will make bg even more popular for WoE players because not only will it be fun, it will become their farming tool to prepare for the 2 WoEs.

And now, last but not least (keep it up, if you're still reading and didn't crucify me yet, i'm proud of you!), I think we need at least one WoE:SE.

Most people who experienced it agree that the second edition is much more fun, forget the freaking ancient precast on warps, there is no more warps. It truely is GvG action. Being on defense is still an advantage in terms of holding the castle but it doesn't give you any lokis the door+precast it possibility.

tl;dr? Please, stop adding freaking custom material and concentrate your energy on updating the server to be on par with the other servers out there in terms of essential basic stuff (bg, SE woes).

[ChaosPrince]

- I support lowering the castles number to 2;
- Guild Package? gears only please... such as War shield, etc (the stuff we currently have, so they actually will have to do some work instead of sitting in town);
- Some players left or only show up for WoE because they were pretty much "complete", therefore, if the Guild's starter pack allows them to skip the grinding, we'll, the general population won't increase much.

-Guild Package should not include healing items. Allow them to make a brewer, create their pots, farm the materiel (way to maintain an active player base).

- I support WoE:SE. How's this, Wednesday WoE stay the same, Saturday we have Retro and Sunday we get WoE:SE? (I can't make it to retro because of IRL schedule, but my guild members have shown interest for Retro lately).

- Variation of the BGs would also be fun! (Capture the flag, mini WoE [where you have to break the gem on the other side within 10 mins], etc).

Keep up the good work! I appreciate the work of our GM-team.

[Snowhawk]

I know PvP was a big thing before BG came in, and on a few other servers I migrated to PvP had its own minor reward program as well. It would involve scripting from GMs, but a good number of WoE players are PvP supportive.

If I remember correctly, the skulls you collect through PvP can be traded for item, gear or pots. Couldn't hurt to go that route if you need a back up. It could be a bit easier to get some lower end WoE useful gear.

[n3xus]

copy/paste from other thread designed to bring current players into the WoE scene

1) make BG more level-friendly
this means higher XP rewards. this means a lower limit of 2vs2. this also means a lower level limit of acceptance to BG. of course this will lead to more "whining" of leechers and people having to "carry" the team but overall... this will lead to more people getting BG gears faster to at least try out WoE. plus... in the wee hours of the night (server time), BGs will have a less chance of being canceled. again... leads to more BG gears for more people.

2) BG / WoE points rewards
make it more pvm community-friendly. say maybe adding hatter cards or haircut coupons or selected MvP drops (heroic emblems? edge? gold?) or maybe even hat vouchers (maybe hat coupon like damp OCA to keep mids from flooding the server). point is, it will attract more pvm players who may actually find themselves starting to like the pvp aspect of ro too. just needs to be balanced.

[azurerogue]

AMJ's post is 100% win. Real BG would be enormously helpful, as would adding consumables to BG rewards. Letting people farm by HAVING FUN is a huge draw. Allowing people to level (seriously) from BG (per Machi and I's previous suggestion) isn't a bad idea either.

Some people LIVE for social interaction in online games. Others LIVE for PvP/WoE - why not let them do that (and almost solely that)? I think it's a valid comparison.

In response to gears only for new guilds - why NOT give them consumables like pots? Yes, they should make their own brewer (eventually) but let them have a ton of potions (ranked even) to give them the time to make said brewer. It doesn't happen overnight.

WoE:SE couldn't hurt the server. What's the worst that happens? It stagnates like the current WoE scene. Oh well. At least we tried.

While I'm against decreasing to 1 castle, 2 might not be the end of the world. Though I still maintain that we shouldn't change castle numbers to match WoE but rather change our server to match the desired castle number.

And, also, thanks not only for the replies so far but also for being constructive. Woo!

[Snowhawk]

No love for PvP Idea Ducky?

[mahawirasd]

+1 to the general ideas being tossed around.

regarding castle numbers tho: i would personally think increasing castle numbers + de-randomizing chests along albus's logic would probably do more good for the overall woe scene rather than reducing it.

another possible solution that i think still deserves mention: changing woe times.
i agree that people should choose their servers based on the woe times given, but based on that statement itself one could surmise that IF we do change woe times, we just might be able to get new players and guilds BECAUSE the new woe times suit them better than the old ones.

and it doesn't have to hurt the older players either... just make the woe times more inclusive to more time zones.


W

[Deviluke]

This might end up a bit of a wall of text, but prior to trying some new servers with DoE I hadn't really played any server other than HeRO, so I've seen some things now that might be good on HeRO as well.

I will just loosely post some ideas and see how that goes. lol

1. I agree that the idea of implementing guild packages is a good one. It would most likely be an incentive for a group to join the server for WoE, and might even seem a bit less intimidating (against already established guilds) if they felt like they had a bit of a helping hand. Especially since this is a low rate and it would already take a lot of time, effort, and farming to get just on the basic level to WoE. I think that consumables AND gears would be reasonable, since it would take them a while to just get their chars ready before considering a brewer (just imo).

2. I agree that we shouldn't constantly be changing the number of castles, and that the WoE community should work to adapt to the current number of castles. However, I keep supporting a change back to 2, since I don't think that the change to 3 castles should have ever occurred. As AMJ said, this is supposed to be a competition and at the time it was increased to 3 castles there were only 3 guilds; DoE, Behemoth, and KoJ. And as far as I recall KoJ was barely even established at the time. Keeping the competitive aspect I think things should have remained the same despite the addition of a 3rd guild to the WoE scene.

3. I think that some time and effort should really be focused into BG, and improving it as well as the current WoE situation. I'm not trying to come off as harsh really, but again as AMJ said the WoE situation has been a problem for a long time, as well as BG (imo, there's been a lot of suggestions/whines about BG over time) yet we usually see attention/energy only going into FURTHER customization. (New custom cards, headgears, Orcus, etc...) I don't think it would hurt to take a step back and focus on some other things that have been a problem for quite some time (or not some many whine threads about them would have accumulated, imho). I think that we should really work on getting official/more bg they really are a lot more fun than the "one" we currently have. I also think that bg should have more rewards such as consumables for bg (maybe even for WoE too not sure really) such higher xp rewards as well as potions, EDP, AD sets, etc. All in reasonable amounts ofc, but if we're trying to entice people to stay WoE-ing or join WoE, making it a bit easier on their farming needs/leveling couldn't hurt imo.

This is a side note but I think that as well as increasing the types of bg/rewards, even working on a better randomizer might be a good idea. As far as I know that has always been a dislike among bg-ers. (I know how much we all love those 4 hp teams.) I know that there are randomizers that are balanced (They take classes into account when assigning teams. i.e. 4 hps = 2 on each side) but I really don't know if that's possible here so don't crucify me/kill me, just thought I'd mention it.

4. I agree that WoE:SE would be a nice change of pace and might draw in some new blood as well. It is definitely more fun than FE from what I have seen/experienced, and as Albus said what's the worse that could happen if the WoE scene is already as dead/stagnate as it is currently. At least it would provide some fun for the current WoE-ers and we could say we tried something new. Tying into what Wira said, the implementation of WoE:SE might also be a chance to open up a timezone that is (for the majority) friendly to the current WoE-ers as well as maybe opening up some space for new blood that couldn't join before (due to timezones). Maybe having this on a Saturday would work for most people(?) not 100% sure, but it is just a thought.

Trying to work again with what Wira said, (please don't kill me I have honestly 0 idea about this and it's just an idea not even sure if I support it 100% or not lol!) I noticed (in trying other servers) that HeRO's WoE is weird in the sense that multiple castles are open at 1 time. I'm not 100% sure why this is? I've seen that usually it is a different castle on different days. (Is this because we don't have SE maybe, since they also ONLY have the dungeon corresponding to the castle?) I was just thinking (at 4:30 am, wonderful time to think I know.) that maybe if we did different castles on different days it might open up room to play around a bit with timezones, since there would be more chances to WoE at different times. Which could draw new blood that couldn't WoE previously. However, I could see where this would turn into a whine of 1 castle = me trying to kill WoE but idk I just thought I'd throw this out there... lol (Don't kill pls =[ )

Finally, to the pvp/skull trade in idea that Snowhawk put I think that it might not be a good idea necessarily to implement it, since I remember when I joined Nevera's guild on another server being told that if you needed consumables to just go get someone to drop skulls for you so that you could get them. So... I see how this could easily be abused. I think that if some improvements were made to BG then everything should be fine without even more ways to get consumables. (Make 'em work, a bit ;x)

TL;DR: Kinda like AMJ I guess, please just focus now on fixing the problem in your faces instead of working on more customization cuz while I don't think the "loss of WoE" would "kill the server" (since there's always pvm/social people) it would cause hero to take a huge population hit (as it kind of currently is.) Improvements to BG/BG rewards and trying to implement WoE:SE would be really nice. And please remember WoE should be competitive =[ lol