shrinking playerbase - critically low

Arbre

But I want baaaaaaaards!

Aishia

I want bards to sing a song so loud that no one can hide from it on the who list.

Vyxsis

Toz said:

Please God no I bought those things specifically to not be found, ever, at all. SCENT is fullsense, it's fast enough as it is, and I don't want to see across the 1 plane we have. I'm impressed Achaea did it, but it can stay on Achaea just like bards.

tbf i'm pr sure that's the point - not being able to be found, ever, at all appeals to some folks, but my observation has been that it generally discourages rather than encourages activity. more than a few people just perma-afk with their gem & hood, which may mean the number of folks signed in remains somewhat higher, but it's at the cost of actual engagement. idk what the motivation is for doing that. i've got no interest in speculating about motivation. i'm pretty sure that the patterns of behavior those artifacts both enable and encourage aren't super great for the game, though.

besides, #TrueFact, nuAscendril are a port of bards. @Tiur's whole plan is to make aetolia achaea again.

Shachalai

I am actually halfway okay with the idea of Making The Ascendril Bardic Again.

Tekias

At least Sciomancers will get Juggling.

Tiur

IT IS NOT JUGGLING!

Vyxsis

Tiur said:

IT IS NOT JUGGLING!

ok, puppetry

EDIT: why did it stick this on the end of another reply i started writing and gave up on

Rasani

Does this mean Vyxsis would be a bug bard? Would you do the grasshopper thing and make music by rubbing limbs together?

Ishin

DELETE HOODS

Aishia

Irruel

Like lots of people in Achaea were, I’d be unhappy with the new product and opt for the refund and buy some other artefacts instead, however I would also support the change. I’ve always thought hiding too effective in Aetolia.

That said, I doubt it would help all that much and don't think it or something similar should be on the table before things like (since Ishin brought up Achaea) houses.

Toz

I mean yeah so you delete hood/veil, upset the people who spent lots to get them, then...what?

I'm still going to be in my haven with my shell behind a locked door or three. I'm still going to be 110% safe and so is everyone else who's doing the afk thing because it's not hard to be perfectly safe while afk. And if you make it so it ISN'T safe to afk then those people are...just going to qq and you'll have less players on anyway which accomplishes nothing except pissing off a bunch of people.

Eowyn

Toz said:

I mean yeah so you delete hood/veil, upset the people who spent lots to get them, then...what?

I'm still going to be in my haven with my shell behind a locked door or three. I'm still going to be 110% safe and so is everyone else who's doing the afk thing because it's not hard to be perfectly safe while afk. And if you make it so it ISN'T safe to afk then those people are...just going to qq and you'll have less players on anyway which accomplishes nothing except pissing off a bunch of people.

I can't agree with you more. People push, and push, to try to make people available to them for RP and everything else. But, frankly, if someone is unavailable? They WANT to be unavailable. If they wanted to be available, they'd make themselves so.

Runas

Delete havens and build subdivisions, then people can just AFK there, then build artifact beds they can hide in with friends.
Same principle, other games have it...Aetolia just has a -smaller- population so people notice it more.

Irruel

Right. So how to make people available to the random true newbie? Even if my example in the OP was an extreme case because of a game crash earlier in the evening, under the Aetolian model it is the guild that is the org responsible for 'first contact'. Even if there were 15 visible people instead of 7, there would probably be some empty guilds.

Would you keep playing if you started a game and it appeared to be empty?

So, condense the guilds into rp orgs for each city. 2-3 per city, population dependent. 

Zaila

These days, it is the city that is the first contact for true noobies, they are not put into their guild until after they have graduated from novicehood.

Kodaza

Irruel said:

Right. So how to make people available to the random true newbie?

The thing is, no one should be required to be.

Welcoming people and retaining them is a very good thing, healthy, benefits all of us. But not everyone has to be forced to take up that responsibility!

It's like charity work. No one will say it's a bad thing, but it can be very tiring and thankless. Aetolia is a game, and people should have fun playing it however they like. For a lot of people, being open and accessible to all isn't going to add to their fun.

For some others, though, they love interacting with every new person they can. They should be encouraged! But the first type shouldn't be punished.

Irruel

I worded that poorly. I don't mean hand holding the newbie, I being visible in gwho and maybe even saying hello - a reassurance that the guild and game has activity and might be worth trying for more than 5 minutes.

If you really don't want to communicate you can turn the channel of or just ignore the traffic on the channel. 

I mean that if I do want to be part of a social atmosphere I can do so from anywhere.

Kyna

In regards to newbies, as @Zaila mentioned above, the newbie experience is entirely city dependent in the beginning, and no longer guild dependent like it used to be, so they are introduced to a larger chunk of their community before walking their guild path.

This was done to show the bigger picture with CWHOs usually being rather active, and allows for a wider ranger of availability to players who are interested in spending time with our fresh players. Similarly, questions on the newbie channel rarely, if at all, go unanswered with players and admin both replying on the channel itself or privately to answer questions or concerns.

Vyxsis

Rasani said:

Does this mean Vyxsis would be a bug bard? Would you do the grasshopper thing and make music by rubbing limbs together?

importantly, vyx isn't now and has never been an ascendril. didn't pass the interview, but that might be because the GM thinks bugs are gross. discrimination case is still pending.

also, vyxsis plays the oboe and sings. the only time she might be caught 'rubbing limbs together' is with Leana.

also also, vyx is mantid, not a grasshopper. or a cockroach (looking at you @Zsadist and @Benedicto).

#ClearingUpMisconceptions #TheRealIssues #AntiHorkvalSentimentIsKillingAetolia

Eliadon

Mantids can chirp. DISCRIMINATION.

Vyxsis

they also hiss. notice it's not rubbing its legs together to produce the sound, though.

Hadoryu

Straight up shocked at the suggestion that there was anything inflammatory about the post. You have one of the oldest IRE players ringing the alarm bell for you out of sheer concern for the game and it's looking like the knee-jerk response is flustered denial.

Do you have any stats on how the IRE playerbase has been steadily shrinking over the years? Might be useful to have actual numbers to pin to inevitability.

Anyway, it's [CURRENT YEAR], so unless you've got plans to advertise the hobby in new and novel ways, you're looking at eventually going out with a whimper. Survival might mean transformation on a pretty fundamental level. There's very little to be done about MUDs just not having a comfortable enough interface for the majority of younger people to connect with anymore. Think back on how hard internetting was when you started playing MUDs compared to now and compare it to the blissful smoothness of pretty much every modern online service.

Just my two cents.

Tiur

Guys, relax. This was a discussion of a QW right after a game crash.

I'm closing this, there's nothing more to discuss, and it gives the wrong impression to a casual forum user.

The best thing anyone can do is just to tell your friends to come play. Heck, some old faces here, just come back to see what's new!