Ember Online

Terron wrote:yeah best remove guilds and party completely, make everyone move independently.

For the last 4 posts now I've said we aren't reducing guild sizes and I'm interested in other options. I'm not sure why you made three posts about guild sizes at this point. lol. You k there mate? 8)

lastly the drelvar mines oad, specifically the miner itself, needs changed. the thing is like unhittable by melee, which is fine. but it isnt really fine when you take a chanter and complete the whole thing in 29 seconds. it literally only takes 13 blasts to gather the delirium crystal. maybe its just knowledge of how these games work, or its because in the first week i pinpointed all the spawn points, etc. but the oad is supposed to detract from doing seta. and atm its basically taking me about 45 seconds on avg.

I'd probably hit up Lat or Lav on that one, if its solo that sounds fairly quick yeah.

I'm sure everyone is in agreement that we want a larger player base, 60 people would be pretty great. When we had 40ish the game felt quite alive, 60 would be nice.

My comment re: gmuds was said because I don't think this game is broken or anything along those lines. I do think the genre is niche, and I also think NH is doing everything he can to try and make it work. The clan embers are going to favor small guilds, so that's a boost for people who want to play in 1-2 man guilds. That said unless we rework all OaDs to be soloable I don't see how 1-2man guilds will ever be as successful (in terms of oads) as larger ones.

Terron has a point too, guilds merely facilitate easier communication. We have like 3 or 4 rogue guilds - well, shit, if you wanna work together and go get stuff DO IT. Make a party and use party chat, or use Discord. NH brought up dragon scales, pfffff. Half the dragon spawns we have 1-3 people dinking away at it. That's...not an unstoppable force.

I don't know what the solution is other than all the stuff I typed in my first reply (leaders working harder at running a guild and promoting a happy environment). I've directed many new players to other guilds and sadly it hardly ever works out. Not because of guild domination or because the game is broken, but because they did not like the environment (or they were never even answered by other guilds in the first place).

This is a game where the players have some responsibility to make it work, it can't all be on NH to design some magic system.

Or.....

We just need Vhexim back because he was one of the few people able to successfully motivate and coordinate others .

Folder wrote:...We just need Vhexim back because he was one of the few people able to successfully motivate and coordinate others .

BRING BACK VHEXIM!

@nitehawk

i dont have an answer for you on balancing friends. nor did i, when countless other muds i have played over the years fail. the reason is the same on every mud ive ever played. there is almost noone willing to put in the effort to be a leader. be it greed or whatever, very few people wanna sit through 300 oads to get other people equipped.

if anything silhouette has a stranglehold on players that actually try to be leaders. the sad truth of it is most of us are drawn to each other in silh because of our chill attitudes. i joined because of wayne and randy. if they didnt exist, i highly doubt i would have joined anything other than silhouette. not because they were OP or had great numbers(because they really didnt when i started). the sole reason from my pov is that noone in silhouette has ever told me to eat a dick, suck my hole, eat my ass, fk off, or any other debasing name. id rather be in a clan of 3 cool people than a clan of 40 assholes.

this game is pretty ez. you can get whatever you want really with dedication from 3 people and a little patience. if huge guilds have 10 on today they wont sooner or later. besides the fact there is nothing to lose by trying, except a few potions. make some new characters that arent focused on pvp, build something that has as much defense/hps as possible so 3 manning salamander is easier.

its really whatevs man, these people have the opportunity to shine at any moment and would rather piggyback. noone to blame but staff and you apparently. dont make shit easier for them when its already piss ez. i killed thantos alone last night, i solo'd treasure fiend a couple times now. its not that hard to succeed. they need to take the first step tho. log on and leave town.

Refinery oad is obviously to hard to even do without a large party, it needs a total revamp in order for people to do it more. And yes, take out some items and move them elsewhere.

I think communication outside of guild is a big deal, and I really like Elvis's idea about announcing new players. I think it would be a step in the right direction.

I know that a completely open world chat has decided against in the past, but if I didn't have a guild to log on and type 'lvl?' into, I'd never play. I think part of the reason the game still exists is that Silhouette is a bigger guild, so when people disappear for a few weeks due to rl stuff, there are other people around to fill the gaps and for people to "come home" to when they log on again. Games like this are hugely social, and someone who last played when Tormented was a powerhouse would now log on to utter silence, especially with a large world map. I don't really have any solutions, but I think framing the problem as "how do we encourage the social aspect" rather than "how do we create more guilds" might be more useful.

Terron wrote:the sole reason from my pov is that noone in silhouette has ever told me to eat a dick, suck my hole, eat my ass, fk off, or any other debasing name.

I'm sorry I've neglected you. Please kindly go eat a dick.

Lissy wrote:I think communication outside of guild is a big deal, and I really like Elvis's idea about announcing new players. I think it would be a step in the right direction.

I know that a completely open world chat has decided against in the past, but if I didn't have a guild to log on and type 'lvl?' into, I'd never play. I think part of the reason the game still exists is that Silhouette is a bigger guild, so when people disappear for a few weeks due to rl stuff, there are other people around to fill the gaps and for people to "come home" to when they log on again. Games like this are hugely social, and someone who last played when Tormented was a powerhouse would now log on to utter silence, especially with a large world map. I don't really have any solutions, but I think framing the problem as "how do we encourage the social aspect" rather than "how do we create more guilds" might be more useful.

Terron wrote:the sole reason from my pov is that noone in silhouette has ever told me to eat a dick, suck my hole, eat my ass, fk off, or any other debasing name.

I'm sorry I've neglected you. Please kindly go eat a dick.

What about me Lissy? WHAT ABOUT ME! BLOODY FAVOURITISM!

mmm nom nom. thnx lissy

I get what most of you Silh guys are saying. I honestly do. But while I understand how the ideas you have expressed (eg playing with friends etc) are good for your game experiences within Silh, I just can't see how they actually translate to the game growing when not every new player can/should join Silh.

For example, firstly many of you say you were attracted to join same group cos of the cool, civilised ppl in it and warm family feel of the guild. That's great. Many newbies would love that and thrive if included in it. Many have already. But every newbie can't join your guild because you also all generally say you all love pvp and the game is boring without it. So who do you eventually fight then? If all the uncivilised, un-cool ppl are kept out of Silh (as daedroth suggests) then the alternative to Silh for any new player isn't going to be very attractive for them is it (as obviously you yourselves wouldn't like not being in Silh)? So what then? How does the game actually attract and retain new players when that new player logs on and realises 70%+ of players online are all friends from the one clan who have closed recruitment, spent months playing and equipping each other and are now looking for someone in the remaining 30% to pvp with? Pretty intimidating I'd say...


So having heard how the current incarnation of the game's guild system has been great for u guys, my question to many of the Silh posters in this thread is this: how does the game grow and retain newbies? Because the only answers to this i hear from you guys are some combination of the following:

1. It doesn't - cos it's 2018, Gmuds r unpopular and ppl who don't like the niche are going to leave anyway .... (Implication: just cater the game for the niche who stay and forget about trying to expand and attract)

2. Find some mystical newbies who are willing to "man up" and solo play unpopular Gmuds in 2028 (or play for hours with undesirable, uncivilised people), largely solo OADs like Thanatos etc (as Terron suggests), and dodge pvp attacks from 70% of active players in 1 guild looking to pvp with someone who isn't their friend etc. Hope these newbs somehow thrive enough to make friends with all the undesirable/uncool people and work hard for months in and out of game to unite them into a warm family environment of friends to provide Silh with a rival clan to pvp against. AND also hope that these people don't actually make friends with the nice/cool Silh ppl and end up liking them enough to want to join them??

That's not a lot of hope to go by imho. Or you can keep hoping that old players will return (an uncertain hope, depending on why they quit which may or may not be related to new content being released), that existing players will attract their friends to the game and rise up to compete, (which historically had happened eg Torm but fizzled for whatever reason, despite them already being ROK vets and not total newbs) or that inspirational leaders like Vhexim would rally some of the active ppl into competing (though from my few chats with him back when he was playing I felt like he stopped cos he wanted to compete by founding his own clan but found it too hard to do under the current system). So surely an incentive system like the one I suggested would help retain ppl like Vhex into successfully starting their own competing clans and give Silh someone to pvp with right?

Shrugs I just don't really see how it works both ways. If EO is to be a "game with friends" and one that "enjoys pvp" then people will need to learn to pvp against their friends. Otherwise it's probably going to either end up a 1 guild game (full of friends, but no competition... And therefore really a chat room with some minor things to occupy) or it's going to have to be one where friends can learn to compete/pvp against each other and still be friends. I can't really see a viable alternative that has been suggested.

Happy to be convinced otherwise by dazzling suggestions of how to attract/retain new players that don't involve dreaming about highly unlikely scenarios where individuals who desire to solo games themselves join/"man-up"/solo-everything... or large groups of friends (of the size to rival Silh) join and stick it out. Neither of those seems very likely to bank on.

Shrugs. Peace all.

I think big guilds should have advantage, but the game shouldnt be entirely food for them.

That's why i think the only thing you can do is put important content that guild doesn't matter.

But how do you do that without no-pk content? I don't think you can.

That's why i suggested global threat areas, where you have to work together to beat a threat.

And it should give good drops for everyone participating, so smaller guilds wouldnt mind that much about bigger guilds have number for everything.