Mr. Nice now has his Rant

Discussion in 'Community Discussion' started by Olaf_C, Jan 30, 2014.

?

Are new players like Internet Explorer

Yes 34 vote(s) 52.3%
No 7 vote(s) 10.8%
Maybe 8 vote(s) 12.3%
Banana 9 vote(s) 13.8%
Is that how you spell banana correctly? 7 vote(s) 10.8%
  1. For the past two weeks I have been pulling out my hair, biting my nails, and slowly going insane (which i do not know how it is possible. I am already insane beyond a normal level (for insane people). A few weeks ago I said I was going to leave. I said it was for the reason for education which was true. I was worried EMC was taking up too much time for me but then I remembered I have no life outside of EMC. I am starting to reconsider. Most people will stop reading right here and then talk about how I am wrong and should stay at EMC and haven't read this full lengthy post, but stick with me.

    Disclaimer: Aikar is amazing and a great coder but you need to hear me out on this. I am not trying to be rude or bad mouthing anyone.

    Over the past little while EMC has been focused on getting new players and having full slots. For the past while I was thinking, "yay! This sounds like a great idea and could help EMC out a lot!". Over the past few weeks this has been becoming true. Most servers are half full during the american day and one or two of the servers are full or near full. These are mostly new players. Aikar is wanting new players. EMC is at or is reaching a 100k in game player milestone. All wonderful until you realize how irritating these new players are. New players (I know this is a really strange comparison but it is true) is the Internet Explorer of the empire. Give off a bad feel, constantly need refreshing, and is just plain annoying. Makes you want to punch a hole through your computer screen. Instead of focusing on new players who stay on empire for a week, or a month, then leave, we should start (re)focusing on the one thing that makes our server great, the community.

    Why I love the empire is the amazing community of intelligent, funny, and talented members. This community of amazing ladies, gentleman, potatoes, animals, sub-humans, aliens, monsters, miscellaneous plants, etc... is eroding away. Players such as Kephras, Cordial_Pie, and many others are leaving the community or are rarely on at all. Well known members and treasures to the community are now playing a lot less. One of the problems are all of these new players. They are getting to the point where it is unbearable. Half of the chat is "can someone tell me how to do _______" or some sort of cluster of rule breaking garbage. Eventually they all get bored, leave, then go slowly destroy another server, then a whole new batch comes in to restart the process.

    Aycat (credit to the new name to bitemenow15), what is the point of all these new player? They are just costing you money. The players who are active in the community and know about the empire are more likely to become supporters. More players is great but more money is better.

    People will ask, "Olaf, are you saying no more new members?". No. The problem solves itself. People stay and learn about the empire, not just do the tutorial and say "eh, good enough". They become interested because of the community.

    Before Aikar disagrees with me and finds a way to factually prove I am wrong, thanks for reading this thread and sticking with me.

    Feel free to agree, disagree, comment, add on, or ramble below.

    EDIT: I feel as if I have been answered but one last thing. Normally I love helping out new players but now it is in a terrible volume. Constantly hearing this stuff in chat is terrible. I am not talking about every new players, i am talking about people who are also refusing to read things like the wiki and who spam questions. There needs to be a ratio of new players to vets (I am not saying an actual number or anything to implement).
    queendiva1, 607, AliceF3 and 37 others like this.
  2. I have to agree with you. And, to be honest, the only reason EMC is needing to try and get new players, is because we haven't been able to retain older members, as EMC has begun to get boring, and updates such as Dragon Tombs take forever to come out. Plus the almost constant amount of pointless fighting, bad attitudes and things...
  3. A long time ago, I hit a certain point in my life where I realized, I just had to deal with stupid people.

    Now, I do not agree or disagree with the idea of the new people being sub-par. What I do believe is that stupidity is relative, and so is maturity. Maturity, can very easily been mistaken for stupidity when the gap is too large. A fact in life is being able to deal with people whom have a large intelligence or maturity gap from your own is a valuable asset. Not to say it will be enjoyable, it is still needed.

    So I challenge you with this; test your own patience with unknown people. Give them the benefit of the doubt and allow them to prove their self either way. If you find their style comfortable, then make a new friend. If not, then make them like you, even if the feeling are not shared.

    This can be rewarding.
    607, AliceF3, BevK56 and 7 others like this.
  4. The community is as strong as it is today because everyone that's active and "intelligent, funny and talented" have been here for months or years. Why aren't any of these new players acting "intelligent, funny and talented" you ask? Because they haven't been here for as long as most of the people you're referring to.

    This is because our joining process and marketing has been lacking for the past few years. When Aikar joined, he began coding but then he also began working on improving our intake of new players, after it began declining when Justin went inactive. The marketing strategy and joining imporvements we have now have always been a goal of the admin team, but only now are they actually in effect.

    When the current great community we have were joining, everyone, and I mean almost everyone (including me) was asking questions, trying to figure out how things work, being an occasional pain, ect. It's the same for everything - to everyone: Did you join a forum and become active and interesting instantly? Did you jump in a pool and instantly learn how to swim? Did you start a class and instantly know everything about the topic? Nope.

    It's our job as the current community members to be patient, helpful and polite to these players that are joining so that one day they reveal their "intelligent, funny and talented" sides and become the future EMC, eventually complaining about all those new players not knowing what they're doing in Supporter chat. :)
    607, BevK56, Equinox_Boss and 3 others like this.
  5. I will agree on some things but I am talking about the user who doesn't care to go on the forums, read the wiki, things like that. Of course you don't know everything once you start but refusing to learn is another thing. I do not see as strong of a community now a days to be honest and a lot of people agree. I have read the help book, and seen the signs in tutorial and at the spawn point in town for new players. I am talking about a group that is getting larger (players who do not really care and drive people insane).
  6. I understand your frustration, I honestly do, and I'm now focusing on improving things for the older members.

    But the main reason I went on the massive new member flux was because EMC was dying.

    There was a very scary downward trend of members leaving, and server populations got really low.
    So I went on the new member push in order to get us back to a positive growth, let people see things growing instead of declining.

    But I guess the one thing I wasn't ready for was the hand holding need of new players. So I did end up having to spend a lot of time in the new player experience.

    But, we are pretty much finished there now. Most new players are at least mostly finishing the tutorial.

    So now, I'm doing exactly as your mentioning: My focus is on the older members. I've even suspended some of the advertising. Well still have some, but going to hold back on cost.

    I finally have a part of DT out, and now designing it in a way I can release it over 4 parts, so that way everyone can start to see actual progress on it and have new stuff to do.

    As you've also noticed - our events are picking up. I'm working with the staff to really get more of them going, to really keep the community engaged and have some stuff to do.

    We will also soon be working on new leaderboards, giving another sense of challenge - that update will be related to Dragon Tombs, and will be part 2 of the Dragon Tomb update.

    So... that is soon.

    I'm hoping to get it so we can see these parts of the DT update come out in the course of weeks instead of months.

    I also am working on improving the groups system with a bit more features such as improved loot pools for grouping, and benefits such as massive group perks if a sr staff/admin sponsors a community expedition - then we will have regular group mining/slaying events where everyone can go out together and have some fun with things such as Dig Speed 6 buff.

    Were on a good track now for really getting things back going, I just saw getting some life and getting the servers back up in population would boost morale, as its hard to say "community" when theres 3 people online, and 2 of them may be in the wild.

    Just give me a bit of time and you'll see much better updates for the existing members now :)
    FatAndyTheGreat, 607, BevK56 and 23 others like this.
  7. Just a re-hash of everything he said above...Dragon Tombs is on it's way to being a thing finally. It's within grasp now instead of being a pipe dream. Stay tuned for good things. :)
  8. That is also a great point I didn't consider. I think the main issue at hand is there are a large number of new players online at once.

    Everyone starts new, and especially now so many more features added to the Empire, there's a lot to learn...

    Just when there's 40 new on all asking at the same time I can see that as frustrating.

    But hopefully itll calm down some with me slowing down the advertising, and as more of these new players learn, the more they can assist others instead.

    Also, If we get all the servers stable in numbers, I will change it so that it evenly distributes new members over the servers instead of all to a single one. Then that will def help the issue.
    queendiva1, 607, BevK56 and 5 others like this.
  9. You heard it here first, folks! :p
    Equinox_Boss likes this.
  10. Oh, want another "you heard it here first"? :p

    Sponge just might be something you can earn through the system the new leaderboards will be for!
    607, Equinox_Boss, _Stads_ and 7 others like this.
  11. That is pretty much the point of the problem. Thank you for understanding. Made me feel a lot happier that the point is getting across. I will sleep a lot easier at night hearing this.
    Equinox_Boss likes this.
  12. For me I got really tired of that a long time ago. Back when I joined players were asking how to craft almost every item imaginable. And lots of players would just give in and tell them how. So that showed others its okay to ask how to do EVERYTHING. Instead of telling them to look it up on google or such they just kept asking. It got to be kinda annoying. I understand when new players play the game they don't know to craft every item but most players don't even try to find the answer on their own they just want everything (spoon fed) handed to them. Also most of those players should have played single player for a while first to get the hang of how to do at least some stuff. Some just went straight for multiplayer.

    It's like if you kept hearing people ask stuff in the real world over and over again "How do I eat?" or "how do I get a pen to work?" it would start to get to you over time.

    But the reason I don't play much lately like I used to is not just work but also the fact that im bored. Before you ask or think about why im bored I will tell you. It's cause im a regular player who can't hide on live map who doesn't want to spend real life money donating just so I can be slightly more protected when I go into the wild. I have went out and made bases or grinders etc in the past and almost every time a griefer would come over and destroy/steal from the base. They usually got away with it to because of the fact there was no proof or evidence of who did it. So most of the time I just spend on my res in town. But it gets boring doing nothing there.

    So I am waiting for dragon eggs so then maybe then me and some friends can finally protect an area and build a base without having to worry about people coming over and destroying stuff etc. Until then im not gonna waste time building a base or anything in the wild because eventually someone will come around and just mess it up. So until it comes out and I can do that the wild really has no appeal to me. Unless I sudden develop a sudden urge to build something amazing and let someone come by and destroy it. :S
    dresden72 and Equinox_Boss like this.
  13. Yep, I Just want to say i've been trying to get some love for older members too. That's actually why DT has been so delayed. It's been a constant struggle of "Old members havent had anything new in a while, work on something for them", so thats where Groups for example came into play...

    Then as I said, I was watching EMC's numbers, and it was just trending down so fast it worried me - and thats what triggered the official change to me taking over as the business owner.

    But when you start spending money... don't want that money to be wasted if 95% of the traffic never even gives us a shot :/ So thats why I was forced to spend extreme effort into new player experience to make sure the money was more cost effective.

    But you know, I'm actually going to consider bringing back the forced site registration... just to see some real comparison in numbers.
    607, BevK56, Equinox_Boss and 2 others like this.
  14. Well, that perk is eventually (maybe even very soon) going to become open to free players.

    I agree with you and back when I Was a mod first pushing my wild support ideas, that was a big thing I lobbied for...

    We always said we didnt want to do it yet though until we can replace the perk for Iron, but honestly - Iron has gotten quite a lot of extra lately and still will get more as number based perks are added. so it still has value.
    BevK56, Equinox_Boss and NZScruffy like this.
  15. You heard it here first, again! :p
    Equinox_Boss, Olaf_C and chickeneer like this.
  16. Well that would be nice. Since if I wouldn't have been visible in the past my (supporter) friend's base probably wouldn't have been griefed and spawners been destroyed just because I was the only one visible on live map at the time when I would visit him (and yes I know it was cause of my visibility because the base was VERY far out in the wild for anyone to just stumble upon especially when it was very far underground and no visible markings on the surface).

    Now if only I could use TNT from time to time then I would enjoy the server a lot more. :p It would certainly make clearing a lot of space in the wild easier.
    Equinox_Boss likes this.
  17. Well, This will finally be fixed on the next update!
    BevK56 and Equinox_Boss like this.
  18. So then people will all by default be invisible, and you have to /map show to be visible?
    Equinox_Boss likes this.
  19. This is just my opinion: In the long run I really think to keep members on EMC we should invest in a new Smp which is for PvP. :) I'm not one for PvP myself but a lot of others do and we need to keep all aspects of the community happy :) So eventually down the line I think this should happen... A lot of people will disagree with me but remember everyone has a right to their point :)

    But as for that I think EMC is doing really well now. When I'm logging off and going to bed the servers are filling up rapidly! :D Smp4 and Smp3 are doing really well saying not that long ago there used to be around 5-15 players on peak time. :)

    So overall Aikar your doing a great job! Just start to focus on the older members that have been loyal to EMC for along time now! :)

    Gadget!
    Equinox_Boss and highlancer54 like this.
  20. Well yea. This is the kind of 'new players' you should expect when you do advertising campaigns like has been done, and get higher rank on ranking sites. The casual, crazy, less than mature, attention span of a goldfish munchkins. In for the instant gratification, less for the long term. :)

    I've been through this on other previously great servers. As you say, the flood gets too much for some established mature gamers, they move on to find another less munchkin server.
    So I've been expecting it for all of the few weeks I've been here. :)

    Firstly, as annoying as it is, these new players will bring more cash to the server than the few established players will bring even with their constantly loyal supportership every month. Which is why Aikar is advertising I guess?

    And it's also the reason I've been very concerned about griefing since I first heard of the campaigns to expose EMC as much as possible to everyone. I do not envy the mods who's workload will increase a lot in weeks to come. Dealing with rule breakers, griefing, stealing, etc. (cringe)
    DT cannot come soon enough, bring on the protection!

    Fortunately, EMC has the advantage of being an awesome server, awesome staff, awesome server owner/admin. More than most servers I've seen. So as long as the staff and owner do not burn out over the increased problem player population, EMC should survive. :)

    Fortunately, we have a wild we can disappear into with no public chat. :) And once protection comes out, we can practically escape the new player hysteria.
    BevK56 and Equinox_Boss like this.