Its been clear for quite a while that AoD hasn't really been doing very well for player count. There's been some suggestions given on ways to help the server, but what use are they if nobody is around to see the changes? When Legends of Primordia is released I feel like this will further depress player count.
While it is always an option so close the server, at this time I feel like that would be the last resort. (This is why I felt the overhaul failed - closing servers never help to increase the player base). We could close the server until LoP is finished, but that could have a similar effect.
So, what do you think should be done to help increase player base? I probably won't have time for a lot of new features, but we can always host events. I've put some options as a poll on this thread, but I would appreciate it if you replied with your opinion as well.
We (staff) will have to decide what to do, so the more feedback the better. Thanks.
-Comp
Its been clear for quite a while that AoD hasn't really been doing very well for player count. There's been some suggestions given on ways to help the server, but what use are they if nobody is around to see the changes? When Legends of Primordia is released I feel like this will further depress player count.
While it is always an option so close the server, at this time I feel like that would be the last resort. (This is why I felt the overhaul failed - closing servers never help to increase the player base). We could close the server until LoP is finished, but that could have a similar effect.
So, what do you think should be done to help increase player base? I probably won't have time for a lot of new features, but we can always host events. I've put some options as a poll on this thread, but I would appreciate it if you replied with your opinion as well.
We (staff) will have to decide what to do, so the more feedback the better. Thanks.
-Comp
TBH closing server until LoP closes doesn't make sense - Ogarci is very determinated to make his server last at least one year.
With aggressive advertising we may even see increase of playerbase on AoD - How many multiserver communities include Heroes SMP as one of their servers?
In my opinion, the key to AoD's success is player retention. As it is, it's not too often that we see a new player join AoD and almost a miracle if they stay. If no-one is on AoD, the chance of them staying is nothing, absolutely nothing. As we all know, when one person is online, there is only one gamemode available; Mob.
Mob was brought in for the reason to get people on and to stay on AoD, and then when people see that there is a person on AoD, they join and a snowball affect ensues. This worked relatively well in the first week (IMO) but then people got bored of Mob and didn't join AoD at all for a number of reasons:
1.It's the same thing over and over
and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over
and it gets very stale, killing zombies, then spiders, then slimes etc. until we all ultimately die on wave 20 from the wither. To freshen up Mob and to keep players on WE NEED NEW MOBS! These have to be creative and fun and challenging. Imagine being chased around by baby zombies on chickens or witches on bats or skeletons that shoot poison arrows, it would make a big difference. WE ALSO NEED NEW BOSSES. Jesus Christ it's annoying, on wave 10 we have the endermen which everyone easily kills by camping inside and hitting them through the doorway and at wave 20 we have the wither why is very hard to kill. We need more bosses which are BOSSES like 10 skele horses etc.
2.The Waiting, OMG the waiting. If you are the only person on, 1 zombie spawns on wave 1. You kill this zombie is about 10 seconds and are left with FIFTY WHOLE SECONDS to wait until two more zombies come and wait again. It is so fecking boring. We need a /skip command during rounds. It would work like the /skip for zombie, with all the people having to type /skip. This would make the game a lot faster. When a player kills the last mob on the round, it could pop up in chat reminding them to /skip In addition to this, round times need to be longer in the harder rounds, you simply have no time to kill mobs and shop
3.The Maps. Some of the maps are really aweeul. Virtually no gameplay and are basically the same (FARMLAND DAMGAWFYAFWDAW). I would suggest holding a Mob map competition, this might not work as people might not participate, but it's worth a shot to get better maps with different kits and styles of gameplay. We need FUN items in kits and in the shop
4.Achievements. We need some real achievements for Mob. Examples would be killing the wither and surviving until round 15 etc. I made a thread on my idea for a newer and better achievements system
All in all, the new player has to be kept on the server, not by force, but because it is genuinely fun! This starts with the Mob gamemode. Forget making improvements to the other gamemodes for the moment, they are fine because if we don't improve Mob, we'll have no-one to play the other gamemodes anyways.
One thing AoD needs is to constantly speak to the player. (Same for RoF, but RoF doesn't need it as much as AoD due to more verbal interaction between players). This means that the plugins running the server need to talk to the player more, send more informative messages depending on the number of players online, so that the player doesn't feel that there's not enough action.
Compliment the player more. If the player got an assist or got a couple of critical hits in a row, tell them that they did that. If a player managed to escape a zombie with low health, tell them about it. If a player is running away from 5 infected players and the round is almost over, push them with a message. When a map is not loaded and a player is alone, tell them to stay. Engage them. I feel like even though chat provides some decent information now, it's providing the bare minimum needed for a player to calculate their score or see how well they are doing in terms of kills and stuff. Chat can be used for more things.
I think it'll do more harm than good closing it. People left when we closed AoD, if we don't need to close it then I don't think we should. If we did, it'd be a risk at least. It's always nice to have it there if people want it. I think it's more the update wasn't as refined as it could have been, so refining the features it has and adding some of the suggestions Mul and Iggy suggested will help.
Remove farmland from mob. There are these barrier blocks that show up on running paths,through fields, etc and you bump into them whilst being chased and basically, you die. It's also an incredibly small and compact map for the amount spawners that have been placed. There is no 'hiding' spots or places to effectively regen if you're on your own and there are five hundred mobs chasing you.
I also lag on that map with the amount of wheat growing and mobs spawning (though I can't help that my crappy computer can't handle that number of entities).
More interesting mob maps with custom mobs (a feature I remember being listed as one of the things to expect from mob) that are kinda exciting and not just some generic enemy you'll find in everyday minecraft survival with the only difference being that they have "deadly" slapped on their names.
Even just creepers on bats would be an improvement.
Jokes aside, another downfall of AoD was the attempts to "revamp" it. I appreciate the attempts, but trying to make Army of Darkness into a multi-gamemode server (much like A&T- and look how well that did) really killed it in the long run. CTF, Infection, and Zombie should have stayed the core gamemodes in my eyes.
I think something that was brought up was communication, and that's true for not only the playerbase, but between staff as well. I don't know what the staff section was like after I left, but during my second stay it was veeeeery quiet. Staff didn't communicate much at all. On AoD 1.0 (kat can attest to this) we spent many late nights discussing playerbase, who we thought should go for staff, and we aired our grievances out to one another because we were a tight system. We didn't have teams within the team, if that makes sense. We all liked each other, and supported eachother's decisions. I didn't see that in the new AoD, which is another reason why I feel it failed.
These are just my thoughts and feelings so don't take anything I say to heart. But I do think it's time to take the server down. It's run its course, and I don't think there's much else that can be done to fully revive it.
Edit: I never intended to make another post on the main forums but here we are. Hi Biblius!
Rebrand it to a decent name.
Separate the gamemodes into different servers (turn them into mini-games or just skip this idea).
Add Paintball.
Make all rounds 5 minutes long.
Open the server up during the weekends when the Community News is posted then close it for the remainder of the two weeks.
