[PART 1/3] Happy that someone is finally talking about the modern issues that we face in the scene. Originally, I wasn't going to comment on this, but as a somewhat well-known and continuous player & admin, I feel that it is my place to contribute to this thread.
I, as a lot of you guys also have, have been playing SRO (ISRO/SROR) since 2010. I came to try out PSRO in 2016 and started maining it in 2017. While these 3 years are short compared to other people's time, I quickly developed as one of the most infamous and "big name players" in the scene, and I played many more servers than most of the people who have been here since VSRO was released to be honest. Although I may not be as well-known as I used to be a couple years back, I do still have the experience that I got while playing over 60-70 private servers, and it stuck with me through these great times. As both a player and an administrator in both big and small servers, I have a unique perspective on all of these scenarios, so I'm going to share my personal opinion on all of these issues. Enough background and let's begin, shall we?
First of all, while the issues that Dizzy mentioned are important, and I will address them further down in this post, they are not the CORE REASONS why you see servers continuously failing nowadays. Servers have been dying faster and faster year after year, and this is for two major reasons: the newfound economic imbalance & the lack of core gameplay additions/edits.
1.) Regarding the "newfound economic imbalance issue:"
- This issue is solely from my own perspective and analysis, but I'm sure that many people can agree with it. You are probably wondering what the hell this even is, so allow me to explain it simply - in a normal environment, you would see a correlation between community growth and spending increase. However, in most recent servers, it is a different and unexplainable one - community is shrinking more and more, and donators are spending more and more.
- Back around 2016/2017, a "big donator" would be on top for a WHILE with only around $500. Nowadays you see people competing to be #1 with mutiple thousands... in servers like Electus and Sailor, you see massive donator competition that spans into the 7k/8k USD range.
- Because of this higher range of donations, you see an even BIGGER imbalance between non-donating players and even regular donators who don't even have a chance to compete among these higher monopolized players who buy their way through the server. This mindset of "I can't compete with these donators..." forces people to quit the server and jump to another one for another chance, or just quit all together.
- People advertise their servers as "play2win," saying that you need to farm points that are untradeable in order to attain the end-game gear... but that's the exact issue: ENDGAME! You see 90% of the community leave the server by the time that you are even eligible to attain these items.
- Also, how can you manage to farm these points when the majority of activities require KILLING/WINNING? Like... you need good gear to do such things, and you only see donators obtaining that early on!
- This entire system is completely faulted & flawed and we definitely need a new core, or else the entire scene will be driven away. Private servers are meant to deliver an EASIER and MORE CASUAL YET COMPETITIVE EXPERIENCE for players. The only server that was close to TRULY ACHIEVING THIS was Pearl by Foberious, and I commend him for this. His server abolished a lot of the pay2win aspects of modern PSRO, and it was very balanced and activity-based for a very long time. We need to follow similar steps in the MAJORITY of servers to bring back the playerbase that we once had... give them a real chance again. This isn't ISRO. We all left ISRO for a reason. Let's not make the same mistakes twice.
2.) The core gameplay additions/adjustments:
This is gonna sound stupid, but stick with me to understand the argument. People are just generally sick of the SRO system. People are tired of doing the same-old-same-old in every server... trading, farming, getting new seals, repeat in a new server, like robots. It gets repetitive after a while and people lose interest and start to distance themselves from Silkroad. The only way to truly ENGAGE people is to factor in something new... make playing WORTH IT, not just "for fun" and wasting your time. I already saw this starting to pop up around the scene, like in Acromus and Nyx, the PVP Tournaments for $. This really forces players to tryhard and engage with the server to become the strongest they can be.
Another possibility is just simply modifying the core gameplay. Add a new type of item with a correlated event/system to farm for. Give players a NEW EXPERIENCE to make them WANT TO PLAY - to TRY SOMETHING NEW. This effectively keeps players motivated and less likely to jump servers!
- But... you won't see this happen. Do you know why? Admins are SCARED to modify the core gameplay of SRO. They want to use something that WORKS and is STABLE, they don't like RISKS. Why you might ask? Because SRO is nothing more than a business to most administrators. They stick with what they know will make a stable profit and continue to run year after year with reopenings. Admins don't want to deliver the content that players want because it affects their profit. It is a conflict between the player and admin that sadly will always exist due to the corruption and greed of the community.
This post is getting long. I'm going to make two more posts - 1 that addresses the issues that Dizzy mentions in the original post, and another with some ideas/suggestions to combat both Dizzy's mentioned issues and my mentioned issues. Maybe someone can take this advice and do something great with it, lets see.
[PART 2/3] In this part of my total response, I'll address the issues that Dizzy mentioned in his original comment. He has some great points that are very important to preserving and lengthening the lifespan of a private server. These are just my opinions and not really my suggestions! That's what part 3 is for!
1.) Repetitive Systems - I'm sure at this point we can all agree that MOST SERVERS for the past 4 years have been using an identical system. The point & coin system is GOOD, it WORKS and ensures activity, and only has some minor flaws, but nothing is ever perfect. People have abused the stability and success with this system, trying to replicate and recreate it with very minor changes - as Dizzy says, it is very repetitive and it basically becomes robotic to perform the exact same activities with the same system everyday that you play. Same system, different names. The cycle is endless and does not stop. In my part 3 response I will be giving a few of my personal suggestions to ADJUST the point/coin system to make it better suited for a more long-term server, but the goal is to completely replace it or do a totally major change... uphaul the system. I don't have any ideas about it but with this goal in mind, people should brainstorm and definitely try to share even minor changes, and together it is definitely possible to form a hybridized system with so many small changes that it actually becomes fixed and viable to use.
2.) Corruption - There are way too many ways to be corrupt in servers and we can all agree that corruption is the ultimate demise to any server. In the end, corruption just comes down to: profit, satisfaction, and unprofessionalism. Admins are stupid, they do not realize that OVERALL, these three factors will actually work in the positive for them if they DON'T engage in these cheating activities, but well... the scene's intelligence is limited, what can you expect? Because this is a major issue, I will provide a fix that I have used in many other servers, that is a very simple idea and 99% accurately helps prove corruption impossible in a server that decides to take my approach.
With most modern admin panels & websites, you have advanced logging systems that show all logs of admin and players chars and their actions - whether that be exchanging, chatting, stalling etc. People keep these logs private, and for what? They can prove to themselves that they are not corrupt, but what does that have to do with the community, where it MATTERS? The obvious fix is to create a logging system that is public for every player to access and be able to check admin console, exchange, stall, etc. types of logs. If you modify your logging procedure, you could also easily be able to log when specific queries are executed or table edits are performed, so you could prevent corruption directly from the database AND admin characters.
Obviously, this idea is not perfect, as technicalities in problem solving, emergency restoration, etc. all could be misconstrued as corruption, however it is a good base idea that can be modified and built on to make a corruption-proof server.
3.) Big Guilds - Actually, big guilds themselves are the OPPOSITE of a problem. They attract more players & community members to join the server and drastically increase activity. The issue with big guilds is THEIR INFLUENCE & THEIR GREED. This is both a GOOD AND A BAD thing, which makes addressing it very difficult. People jump to the conclusion that big guilds are bad because when they leave a server, it causes a domino effect and a sudden sharp drop in server population. Obviously, this is a very bad thing, but it is not totally due to the community, it is because the majority of server admins that pay & attract big guilds use them as a lifeline for their server and free targeted advertising, which causes the admins to slack off on RANDOM COMMUNITY ADVERTISEMENT such as on Elitepvpers or Facebook. That, again, is just another ACT FOR PROFIT, where big server admins think that they can save a lot of money because large guilds will attract a community for them... however this is not the reality whatsoever. If admins focused on both actual advertising AND big guilds, you have yourself a server with a massive population that receives only the benefits of big guilds, and makes it significantly harder for those guilds leaving the server, to kill it completely.
4.) Communication - This is a HUGE ISSUE and admins neglect it 24/7! RUN POLLS AND READ YOUR SUGGESTIONS/IMPLEMENT THEM! THESE TWO THINGS WILL REALLY MAKE A HUGE IMPACT, TRUST ME!
5.) Pay2Win - Kinda addressed this already in Part 1.
6.) Poor management - 100% agreed here. Random people throw together teams to create a server just because it is a semi-low investment project with a pretty big profit yield. Opening a server is a great business opportunity and is in reach to many players. Everyone loves money, they try to jump on the bandwagon and earn some themselves. In reality, nobody in the scene has the proper business or administrative experience to call themselves "professional." That word is thrown around so much and it is kind of shameful to be honest. However, on the flipside, this is a private version of a 2005 MMORPG. It isn't a business. The level of professionalism needed to run the server adequately is not as high as many people set the expectations to be, which is another issue - overexpecting. ---- We don't have the source code to this game, there are a limited number of things that can be done. So many issues that are spewed around by the community are very difficult/impossible to fix or achieve because of this, and it causes completely unrealistic expectations. People need to realize that this is not a business, it is not a JOYMAX competitor. But yeah.
7.) Fake people - I don't really see an issue tbh. People fake their names to clear their past mistakes. This is a harsh and unforgiving community, if you fuck up, you're done. Just another reason why this community is so retarded, but anyways, fake name = clean slate = everyone has a chance. Everyone deserves a second chance, no matter how badly you fuck up. As long as you learn from your mistakes, then it is totally valid and okay imo. The only issue I see with fake names is that the same people dominate the scene and over-monopolize the server business for greed and personal gain.
8./9. kinda addressed this too
10.) Alchemy - there are so many good fixes for this issue: quests, NPCs for currencies, etc. The issue is that the community is not willing to adapt to a better change in the alchemy system, because the alchemy system is the core method of silk for silk sellers and smaller "business operatives" stationed as players. People have efficiently fixed this many times. It is a community issue and not a developmental one. Unfortunately that will never ever change... the server will not succeed without all 3 parts of the player community (donators, silk sellers, and non-donators) at least somewhat satisfied with the system.
11 & 12 addressed that stuff too.
In part 3 I will be offering some decent solutions for the problems above, these are just my opinions regarding these issues.