Suggestion New set of standards for the OtLand community.

[J.Dre]

Hi, everyone. Today we're here to discuss a concern of many, including myself.

It's time we set some new standards for OtLand and the entire Open Tibia community, wouldn't you agree? In the past few years, we've seen a great community decline to historically low levels. We need to hit the reset button and change our ways before things become so unrecognizable, it's too late to change.

We can start with preventing the advertisement of donation-only Open Tibia servers that have been reset multiple times, with clear evidence of corruption, greed, manipulation, and exploitation of kids. The fact that "owners" of Open Tibia servers are allowed to continue advertising and discussing their servers on OtLand after half a dozen resets - with their last attempt being less than 3 months prior - is absolutely ridiculous. They do not care about the OtLand community. They're exploiting it for "donations." So called "donations" have completely destroyed what Open Tibia once stood for. I fear we will never see those days again. But, we can take measures to prevent it from becoming worse. What's the point of being an "Open Source" community if the only objective is to make money? The community does not need people who are copying old threads, relaunching without making any substantial effort to improve their project. These people are the embodiment of what is wrong with Open Tibia - making thousands of dollars, only to reset again in a matter of months. It's entirely unethical. How can anyone expect OtLand to survive when these acts are overlooked?

Donations themselves are not bad and are not the problem. The problem is we're allowing people to exploit the meaning of a donation, and it's happening throughout all of Open Tibia. What has happened? Where did the ambitious and passionate developers / owners go? Why must we be forced into affiliation with this? This has been something that utterly disgusts me every time I go through the discussion and advertisement section of Otland. The meaning of donation has been skewed and exploited so much, it's quite frankly shameful to even use.

We must act now and begin transitioning into a more ethical and sustainable way of advertising, developing, and hosting or ownership - a trend toward what is right by enforcing a new set of rules and disallowing the advertisement "donation focused" projects (with multiple resets) and nothing more to offer the community except shame. OtLand administration needs to step up and implement more rules or guidelines for the entire OtLand community. There are plenty of moderators to enforce new rules. What's the point of having moderators if there's nothing to enforce? It's important we understand that action is what changes things. It is our responsibility as senior members to prepare those who will one day replace us to carry on our legacy by acting as role models for future generations. To change the community will take time... In that I have no doubt. It will not be easy, nor will it be clean, but it is necessary. To change ourselves will take courage, and it is honestly our last hope if we want to save what's left of the Open Tibia community. We need to stop enabling those who are exploiting the Open Tibia community for personal gain and start enabling those who genuinely enjoy Open Tibia for what it is.

Please do not be afraid to post below and discuss what has been mentioned above. I've discussed this future with dozens of members over the years. You may notice I did not mention any project names or point out anyone in particular, but you know who and what I am talking about. There is no denying it anymore. It's time to face what we have done.

Let's set our egos aside for a moment and constructively work to change something.

Regards,
J.Dre

P.S. I would liked to have written more, but I'm going to be late for class. Please keep the trolling, spamming, and offensiveness to a minimum. This is a serious problem. Maturity is something we all can appreciate.

 

[Jacobs]

Was discussed, will be disscussed.
Money rule the world.
Nothing will be changed.
End of story.

 

[Red]

J.Dre,

Your post and your goals are noble, but I'm afraid they are falling on deaf ears.

As far as Open Tibia communities go, OTLand is the largest and most fruitful community of them all; it has been for many years now. Unfortunately, that does not mean that even a fraction of Open Tibia players are a part of this community. Anyone that has ever hosted a server of their own can testify that http://otservlist.org/ is the most visited Open Tibia resource when someone from the "Tibia" realm wants to look for an "Open Tibia" server. Partly, because it was the first, most well-known, and is still around.

Money was an obvious complication of the business, my first experience with the idea of offering something OT-related for money was as early as 2006. Monetary compensation isn't inheritly bad; rather, it opens a gateway for (as @Dalkon delicately calls them) "pizza" servers. A lot of people can say that "donations have ruined Open Tibia" but a lot of people don't remember back in the day when a really well-developed server was incredibly laggy for almost everybody (because the hoster was hosting the server on dail-up) ended up shuting down after less than two weeks and never seen again.
In fact, one of the best Open Tibia servers I ever played matched that criteria pretty darn well; it was so great, one of the first servers I ever hosted (back in 2005) was based very much around that server.
The point? Many players take for granted how stable servers are these days, how downtime less than 10 minutes for an entire week was nearly unheard of back when Open Tibia was too young to monetize.

Unfortunately, with money, come pizza servers. On an even more unfortunate note, the Open Tibia player base (largely not a part of OTLand) still flock to those servers. These players don't care about what the owner has done, or how poorly the server is developed (or the opposite.) They play, pay, and don't care that next month the server doesn't exist. It's the bulk of the Open Tibia player base that breed pizza servers and stunt the growth of servers that are developed professionally, or at least developed well.

To make the situation more dismal, when one server can shine for its prowess and provides something unprecedented, the same "Open Tibia community" will almost inadvertantly drive it to its early demise.
[I'll just leave this here as a testament to my point.]


TL;DR

"Open Tibia" players, which are much more than a minority on OTLand, prefer crude and fruitless entertainment. They will play a server regardless of how awful it is, and do not care for the server's credentials and/or owner. As long as the server has _x_ players online and they can get their jollies, it could be the worst server anyone's ever seen.

The same "Open Tibia" players drive away passionate server developers with their discourteousness and ungratefulness. This drives developers with a passion to a place where they become cold.

Finally, I've been focusing the majority of this blame on the "Open Tibia" players -- a group of people that remain nameless. I feel the reason that this group exists is not a fault of our own; they exist because CipSoft has developed a game that has been relentlessly dumbed down. Players that want instant gratification, want to work for nothing, and could choose between playing two different OT servers more easily than they could choose whether to drink a Coke or a Pepsi.

There is a problem. I don't think it can be fixed.
You can make the most awesome server ever, or the most "pizza" server ever. Either way, they will kill you in the end.
Red

 

[whitevo]

It's time we set some new standards for OtLand and the entire Open Tibia community, wouldn't you agree? In the past few years, we've seen a great community decline to historically low levels. We need to hit the reset button and change our ways before things become so unrecognizable, it's too late to change.

Sadly I have no clue what are you talking about. Perhaps I'm too new in this forum.

Over the months I have seen big and respectful names posting here and there or helping out new people. Sometimes they gone missing for months and then came back again.
But I guess that people used to talk about lot of different things. Now the main activity surrounds these topics:

1. What is being created (either new servers or somebody posting maps,sprites,art)
2. Who is stealing who's files/script/ideas (Idk, seems funny to read about topics like these, where people just bashing eachother, quite an entertainment xD)
   
3. Entire Support section(with small and big issues), no doubt that Ninja, Limos and halfaway are the main flag owners of this section, but there is LOT OF people who responded before and now who keep helping out with problems

We can start with preventing the advertisement of donation-only Open Tibia servers that have been reset multiple times, with clear evidence of corruption, greed, manipulation, and exploiting of kids. ...

O yea, I have seen this, It's actually pretty tempting xD I was very close to start developing a cash grab server to get some ground money for Whi World, but other things came up and I passed that opportunity.

It would be pretty cool if new title is is passed down in the community called: gamer or whatever.
Who has power to manipulate advertisement threads. Either to give them a thumbs up or a warning that this is bad server.

Although I can see that there are several users who give pretty good reviews on quite many servers what seems to have potential, but I guess "like" button for his post is not nearly enough to keep them interested to keep them giving their full opinions.

We should do a thread and request(ok fuck it, WE NEED) a sticky for it in advertisement section.
And on this thread, we list all the server what are WORTH playing, but this thread must be either made by active user or server tester itself, because only 1 user can edit the post 1 (and well mods).
But this thread will be only useful if users actually give their honest feedback about the servers.
Maybe even include some point system where they gotta rate the server aspects: (map, gameplay, staff, etc) although the beauty is in user eye, so could not be that good idea, but it would bring up new discussions out of nothing.
Well.. now I forgot what I actually wanted to say.. moving on..

What has happened, fellas? Where did the ambitious and passionate developers / owners go? Why must we involve ourselves in this crap? This has been something that utterly disgusts me every time I go through the discussion and advertisement section of Otland. The meaning of donation has been skewed and exploited so much, it's quite frankly shameful to even use.

I'm here! I'm passionate! donations? sure, but when game is ready. You can pay for art (aka visual addons), not for game.
About all the ones who are exploiting the kids with "nothing" and dragging down the OTLand developer reputation. Well this is the kind of reason we need "tester team" what will label the server "made by good developer", "unknown developer with copy-paste content". Although with reputation building it has to be consistent and progress is slow. Once the majority finds out that there is place where server go trough filter, they might start looking servers differently and even see improvements and spend more of their though here, which then again boosts developers morale, etc)

Right now most developers compete with: whoever has more players, who earn more money
But I want to compete with: Who has what kind of cool ideas and how they worked out.
This will sound bad and very egoistic, but right now in custom server scene I feel like I'm only making my server so I could eventually compete with Necronia.
There is several very good custom server out there already, but they make so much filler I can't even find something what would impress me, where in other hand Necronia is very impressive. (expect poke tibias, never looked into them, but they seem to be VERY unique too)

On another note. I'm still very pleased that I found out about his community and being part of it (even though several of you want delete me, and probably even more after this post)
I am very pleased to see that I have found people with who to talk about game developing and showing eachother what we have accomplished and even help eachother with things we can do.

Behind the scenes, carrier pigeons are flying and I'm sure, eventually long waited servers are going to pop out and bandage up the OTLand developing reputation.

 

[Codex NG]

@whitevo @J.Dre & @Red tl:dr, learn to summarize

 

[whitevo]

@whitevo @J.Dre & @Red tl:dr, learn to summarize

I am an idiot, give me an example how would you summarize each of our post in 3-5 sentences. Then I next time i post Wall oF Text, I know how to summarize.

 

[Codex NG]

I am idiot

This is the 1st and possibly only post I'll every agree with you on.. I just might make it my new sig

 

[J.Dre]

J.Dre,

Your post and your goals are noble, but I'm afraid they are falling on deaf ears.

As far as Open Tibia communities go, OTLand is the largest and most fruitful community of them all; it has been for many years now. Unfortunately, that does not mean that even a fraction of Open Tibia players are a part of this community. Anyone that has ever hosted a server of their own can testify that http://otservlist.org/ is the most visited Open Tibia resource when someone from the "Tibia" realm wants to look for an "Open Tibia" server. Partly, because it was the first, most well-known, and is still around.

Money was an obvious complication of the business, my first experience with the idea of offering something OT-related for money was as early as 2006. Monetary compensation isn't inheritly bad; rather, it opens a gateway for (as @Dalkon delicately calls them) "pizza" servers. A lot of people can say that "donations have ruined Open Tibia" but a lot of people don't remember back in the day when a really well-developed server was incredibly laggy for almost everybody (because the hoster was hosting the server on dail-up) ended up shuting down after less than two weeks and never seen again.
In fact, one of the best Open Tibia servers I ever played matched that criteria pretty darn well; it was so great, one of the first servers I ever hosted (back in 2005) was based very much around that server.
The point? Many players take for granted how stable servers are these days, how downtime less than 10 minutes for an entire week was nearly unheard of back when Open Tibia was too young to monetize.

Unfortunately, with money, come pizza servers. On an even more unfortunate note, the Open Tibia player base (largely not a part of OTLand) still flock to those servers. These players don't care about what the owner has done, or how poorly the server is developed (or the opposite.) They play, pay, and don't care that next month the server doesn't exist. It's the bulk of the Open Tibia player base that breed pizza servers and stunt the growth of servers that are developed professionally, or at least developed well.

To make the situation more dismal, when one server can shine for its prowess and provides something unprecedented, the same "Open Tibia community" will almost inadvertantly drive it to its early demise.
[I'll just leave this here as a testament to my point.]

Hi Red, I'm glad you decided to post in this thread. It would be nice to hear from more senior members or staff members alike.

For the sake of this discussion, from "falling on deaf ears," I'm going to assume you're suggesting that the staff of this forum don't care or aren't going to listen to what has been said because they feel there's nothing worth fighting for or left to do. That's a huge problem in itself. The community "leaders" simply may not have the time nor the willingness to enact change, and I completely understand why. It's no mystery to me that our lives change, priorities change, and Open Tibia becomes nothing more than a once long gone hobby. But if this is the case, wouldn't you say that these "leaders" need to step down and move on? Would that not be the first step in a series of steps these leaders should take as leaders? How can a company, business, forum, or anything, expect to thrive when its own leaders do not care or are unwilling to take action and support what they have built. Hypothetically speaking, if OtLand were a business run by a board of directors, wouldn't you agree that the board would agree with this? Progress is not possible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. We have to start somewhere...

Now, with that said, I think this discussion is moving into another area of which undoubtedly requires attention, but I want to focus on the area I mentioned in the main post: advertising & discussion. If you will look back at my post, you'll see that I did mention that donations are not the problem. Money is required to host servers - this I do not deny nor ever have denied. I'm well aware that earning money is part of life and will always be a priority. But there are server owners that intentionally reset after 1-3 months online, create new threads and proceed to beg for attention. These people are exploiting Open Tibia for the simple fact that it's an easy mark due to the fact that it's primarily consisting of young kids and teens. This can easily be prevented, and should be seen as a first step toward the right direction. The first step to getting anywhere is in deciding we will not stay where we are now.

I'm not suggesting these people be forbidden from the sections, nor am I suggesting they be banished from the community. There are many alternatives to banishment and exclusion. For example, one alternative is to separate the sections into sub-forums. Those servers who are continuously resetting and starting over can be thrown into a pile of servers alike to separate them from those who are only just beginning or have truly put the time and effort to develop a project the community may be proud to stand behind. The fact that these "resetting" servers continuously create new threads with the same material to avoid bad reputation is in itself is against the rules, is it not? Would that not be considered spam if it were just copy/pasted into a new thread?

As I've mentioned before, there are many moderators whom I'm sure are willing to support new rules and establish a better foundation for which we can begin to grow upon in the future. The first step would be to stop enabling those who are merely seeking to exploit the community for their own personal gain. It is quite obvious which servers fall under this category.

 

[GM Lubo]

I am an idiot.

I am happy you said this.
Thank you for making my day.

 

[Red]

Hi Red, I'm glad you decided to post in this thread. It would be nice to hear from more senior members or staff members alike.

For the sake of this discussion, from "falling on deaf ears," I'm going to assume you're suggesting that the staff of this forum don't care or aren't going to listen to what has been said because they feel there's nothing worth fighting for or left to do. That's a huge problem in itself. The community "leaders" simply may not have the time nor the willingness to enact change, and I completely understand why. It's no mystery to me that our lives change, priorities change, and Open Tibia becomes nothing more than a once long gone hobby. But if this is the case, wouldn't you say that these "leaders" need to step down and move on? Would that not be the first step in a series of steps these leaders should take as leaders? How can a company, business, forum, or anything, expect to thrive when its own leaders do not care or are unwilling to take action and support what they have built. Hypothetically speaking, if OtLand were a business run by a board of directors, wouldn't you agree that the board would agree with this? Progress is not possible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. We have to start somewhere...

Sorry, let me clarify a bit.

My "falling on deaf ears" comment was not intended to be directed toward the staff of this forum or the Open Tibia leader(s) in general. In fact, I'm not only consistently impressed with the work that's put into TFS (which was a primary fuel source for OTLand at its start) on a regular basis. Yes, a good bit of the forum's staff is rather inactive; I'd also consider myself more inactive than I ought to be. You made a good point regarding lives and priorities changing, this is very true; I hope to amend that when I'm no longer pigeonholed in my current job.

To be direct - I don't think an overhaul of administration or anything that can be done from an organizational standpoint can "revive" this community. I meant to say that I feel your intentions will fall on deaf ears by my own definition: that the problem lies within the "Open Tibia" players; and almost nothing else. Unfortunately, this problem was created indirectly by CipSoft, and it's theirs to fix. If they don't fix this problem (and I don't see a possible "fix" to it) it will drive their game to extinction as soon as they run out of ways to milk their remaining player base.

Now, with that said, I think this discussion is moving into another area of which undoubtedly requires attention, but I want to focus on the area I mentioned in the main post: advertising & discussion. If you will look back at my post, you'll see that I did mention that donations are not the problem. Money is required to host servers - this I do not deny nor ever have denied. I'm well aware that earning money is part of life and will always be a priority. But there are server owners that intentionally reset after 1-3 months online, create new threads and proceed to beg for attention. These people are exploiting Open Tibia for the simple fact that it's an easy mark due to the fact that it's primarily consisting of young kids and teens. This can easily be prevented, and should be seen as a first step toward the right direction. The first step to getting anywhere is in deciding we will not stay where we are now.

I'm not suggesting these people be forbidden from the sections, nor am I suggesting they be banished from the community. There are many alternatives to banishment and exclusion. For example, one alternative is to separate the sections into sub-forums. Those servers who are continuously resetting and starting over can be thrown into a pile of servers alike to separate them from those who are only just beginning or have truly put the time and effort to develop a project the community may be proud to stand behind. The fact that these "resetting" servers continuously create new threads with the same material to avoid bad reputation is in itself is against the rules, is it not? Would that not be considered spam if it were just copy/pasted into a new thread?

As I've mentioned before, there are many moderators whom I'm sure are willing to support new rules and establish a better foundation for which we can begin to grow upon in the future. The first step would be to stop enabling those who are merely seeking to exploit the community for their own personal gain. It is quite obvious which servers fall under this category.

Your ideals are sound. Putting this idea into practice is more than problematic. I'm sure we can all think of one, or more, members of this community that do exactly as you say. Unfortunately, deciding on who these members are is a subjective measure, which leads it to a realm of bias. I'm sure there are quite a few members of this community that would lump me into this category. My own server has reset more times than I have on one hand (although it's been online more years than I have on one hand as well.)

All it takes is a few "unfair" banishments for this idea to crumble. Setting high-stakes rules based on subjectivity will cause nothing but a worse situation than the one we're currently in. Creating objective standards will lead to guidelines to avoid meeting the concrete standards, thus not fixing the problem.

tl;dr (@Codex NG)

- The problem lies in the 90% of players that play OTs that are not a part of this community.
- This problem can only be fixed by CipSoft (which it will likely not be.)
- Administrative changes are not needed / would not benefit the situation.
- You cannot fix an abstract problem with subjective solutions (they sound better on paper than in practice.)

Red

 

[J.Dre]

Your ideals are sound. Putting this idea into practice is more than problematic. I'm sure we can all think of one, or more, members of this community that do exactly as you say. Unfortunately, deciding on who these members are is a subjective measure, which leads it to a realm of bias. I'm sure there are quite a few members of this community that would lump me into this category. My own server has reset more times than I have on one hand (although it's been online more years than I have on one hand as well.)

All it takes is a few "unfair" banishments for this idea to crumble. Setting high-stakes rules based on subjectivity will cause nothing but a worse situation than the one we're currently in. Creating objective standards will lead to guidelines to avoid meeting the concrete standards, thus not fixing the problem.

tl;dr (@Codex NG)

- The problem lies in the 90% of players that play OTs that are not a part of this community.
- This problem can only be fixed by CipSoft (which it will likely not be.)
- Administrative changes are not needed / would not benefit the situation.
- You cannot fix an abstract problem with subjective solutions (they sound better on paper than in practice.)

Red

Don't persecute yourself. I'd hardly say your project falls under the purview of this notion. You have had it online for five years and have reset once? And that reset is what the players supported. I am referring to those that have been online for less than a few months and have had more than half a dozen resets during their lifetime for personal gain, along with reports of corruption, etc. The owners of which call themselves "developer" but do no more developing than a thief does giving. Let's not turn this into something it's not.

Again, I disagree that they are subjective. There are threads with dozens of posts from players reporting corruption, greed, manipulation; you name it. This is hardly a subjective matter. As a matter of fact, I've reported at least one in the past week of which I was hoping a moderator would look into, but I was told there's no rule to enforce in regards to exploitation for personal gain. This is what triggered my response to open a thread in the public feedback section, as opposed to keeping the discussion "in house" among friends.

The situation could easily be resolved through other means. My suggestion above was merely one example of how to approach this issue. I'd be more than happy to share a few more, if the staff would be interested in hearing. The whole point is to open discussion and begin brainstorming together, as no single person can accomplish this on their own. Not even Talaturen. My past experience dealing with this matter privately has taught me that hardly anyone cares*, and my hope is that the community will support such a movement.

I've even spoken with you about this in private before. Surely you remember. Even then, you've always shot me down or disagreed with the idea. It is difficult for me to understand why everyone must negate, critique, or tear down my ideas as opposed to suggesting a mix of their own, or expanding off what has already been suggested. What I've come to learn is that, if it's important enough to you, you'll find a way. If not, you'll find an excuse. And quite frankly, my experience has proven that very few of the staff members of this community feel it is important enough to act.

There's not much more to say beyond this. It's time to act. Let's work together and figure this out.

*It is not my intention to bring up the past, but I feel it is relevant: What I am referring to here is my attempt at beginning discussions many years ago, back when OtFans was on the brink of demise. At the time, I was a forum moderator and regularly spoke with OtFans staff. A lot of friends, including those from OtLand, agreed there must be something we can do to reverse this cycle. In hopes of opening discussion, I attempted to contact Talaturen. He said some rude comments, most of which implying I was a useless end user. It may be true that I am only one user, but that doesn't make it any less true that there is a problem and something must be done.

 

[Leo32]

Sorry, let me clarify a bit.

My "falling on deaf ears" comment was not intended to be directed toward the staff of this forum or the Open Tibia leader(s) in general. In fact, I'm not only consistently impressed with the work that's put into TFS (which was a primary fuel source for OTLand at its start) on a regular basis. Yes, a good bit of the forum's staff is rather inactive; I'd also consider myself more inactive than I ought to be. You made a good point regarding lives and priorities changing, this is very true; I hope to amend that when I'm no longer pigeonholed in my current job.

To be direct - I don't think an overhaul of administration or anything that can be done from an organizational standpoint can "revive" this community. I meant to say that I feel your intentions will fall on deaf ears by my own definition: that the problem lies within the "Open Tibia" players; and almost nothing else. Unfortunately, this problem was created indirectly by CipSoft, and it's theirs to fix. If they don't fix this problem (and I don't see a possible "fix" to it) it will drive their game to extinction as soon as they run out of ways to milk their remaining player base.



Your ideals are sound. Putting this idea into practice is more than problematic. I'm sure we can all think of one, or more, members of this community that do exactly as you say. Unfortunately, deciding on who these members are is a subjective measure, which leads it to a realm of bias. I'm sure there are quite a few members of this community that would lump me into this category. My own server has reset more times than I have on one hand (although it's been online more years than I have on one hand as well.)

All it takes is a few "unfair" banishments for this idea to crumble. Setting high-stakes rules based on subjectivity will cause nothing but a worse situation than the one we're currently in. Creating objective standards will lead to guidelines to avoid meeting the concrete standards, thus not fixing the problem.

tl;dr (@Codex NG)

- The problem lies in the 90% of players that play OTs that are not a part of this community.
- This problem can only be fixed by CipSoft (which it will likely not be.)
- Administrative changes are not needed / would not benefit the situation.
- You cannot fix an abstract problem with subjective solutions (they sound better on paper than in practice.)

Red

I still believe the best thing we can do as creators is cater to outside audiences (and not go down the cancerous path of money gouging our players).
We have RPGMaker for an Ultima-style MMO, but we're limiting ourselves to that dead Tibia game.

I'd like us to move away from a deployed client, to a web-based client (a cloud solution - if you will).
The best solution right now would be the flash client as its proven to be flexible and can be essentially reduced down to its source simply do the fact that its flash.

You've probably noticed my posts where all my screenshots use the flash client (I use as my testing sandbox and plan to use it exclusively on my server because it actually works beautifully, it's just needs some damn support!).

I've put a $300.00 bounty on the request, to hopefully get some eager minds into the idea.​

It's not worth me mentioning this idea without the philosophy on why I think its our next best step (This is a repost):

I have such enthusiasm for a web-based solution, simply because of the potential it has to attract an external player-base.

Our player-base is so niche.
Gamers -> MMO Players -> Tibia - > OpenTibia

Custom servers take this further, filtering the OpenTibia players down to those who want a custom RPG experience (Which doesn't seem to be a alot).

Having a web-based solution means your entire project is contained to your website.
Players don't need to know about anything else, just your website address - and they are a potential player for whatever creation you can dream up.​

 

[whitevo]

I still believe the best thing we can do as creators is cater to outside audiences (and not go down the cancerous path of money gouging our players).
We have RPGMaker for an Ultima-style MMO, but we're limiting ourselves to that dead Tibia game.

I'd like us to move away from a deployed client, to a web-based client (a cloud solution - if you will).
The best solution right now would be the flash client as its proven to be flexible and can be essentially reduced down to its source simply do the fact that its flash.

You've probably noticed my posts where all my screenshots use the flash client (I use as my testing sandbox and plan to use it exclusively on my server because it actually works beautifully, it's just needs some damn support!).

I've put a $300.00 bounty on the request, to hopefully get some eager minds into the idea.​

It's not worth me mentioning this idea without the philosophy on why I think its our next best step (This is a repost):

I have such enthusiasm for a web-based solution, simply because of the potential it has to attract an external player-base.

Our player-base is so niche.
Gamers -> MMO Players -> Tibia - > OpenTibia

Custom servers take this further, filtering the OpenTibia players down to those who want a custom RPG experience (Which doesn't seem to be a alot).

Having a web-based solution means your entire project is contained to your website.
Players don't need to know about anything else, just your website address - and they are a potential player for whatever creation you can dream up.​

I like external client more than flash, but that is beside the point.
I do agree we have to get rid of the Tibia between MMO players and open tibia.
But action towards this has already been taken. OT community is actually taking last steps towards the freedom. (pixelrealm)
We got Custom client, custom source and if we start using custom sprites. Well we just need developer to put game together, what we can freely bring to 2D MMO players with no legal issues.

 

[J.Dre]

@Shadowsong and I had a great discussion last night about this issue. He agrees that something must be done, and hopefully he'll share his point of view when the time best suits him. I've also been approached by a few other members on Skype and we've discussed many ideas of what may help the community thrive. I hope they build up the courage to post here!

Have to start somewhere.

 

[Deleted member 49793]

The same "Open Tibia" players drive away passionate server developers with their discourteousness and ungratefulness. This drives developers with a passion to a place where they become cold.
Red

Nailed it.

 

[Chris]

I have absolutely no desire to play Tibia or any Open Tibia server for that matter, but having been part of Open Tibia from the very beginning, it really does sadden me to watch how it's on its knees, grasping for whatever little air is left. That doesn't necessarily mean that OtLand and / or Open Tibia will completely seize to exist within the next year, but more and more developers have in fact stopped providing to what used to be a blooming community. Rarely would a day pass without a major new release of some sort. These days, it's the opposite.

I'm not blaming any one individual, but rather the collective all together, we've all let this happen. That being said however, massive kudos to all the people that do still contribute to the community in one way or another, really, great job! Unfortunately, their effort alone is not enough. I'd honestly hate for this community to die, despite my lack of interest in the game itself and as @J.Dre is pointing out - something has to be done if we truly want to prevent this, and I for one do. I won't be as active as I used to be, browsing the forums several hours a day, but I'll do the little I can do, and that'll mostly be in the form of developing pandaac and answering the odd support thread. I don't expect anyone to spend most of their days trying to salvage this sinking ship, but if you can spend an hour or two every once in a while to help better the situation, why not? I imagine you're still around these forums because you have some sort of interest, or connection to it, right?

People can sometimes be extremely ungrateful, I am aware of this, but don't let that deter you. Instead, enable those who do provide positive feedback, those who are grateful and everyone who is lurking in the shadows. There is satisfaction in that too, I promise you. There used to be this extreme desire for people to learn how to develop their own servers, and maybe that is the one thing we can't force upon people, but I'll be damned if we should do nothing because we see little to no hope.

To anyone who has read up to this point, if you have a question, a thought, an idea, whatever the case may be, send me a PM and I'll happily discuss it with you (keep in mind that it might take a while for me to respond, but I check the site almost every day). I'm not really up to date with it all, but I've been around long enough to know my way around it.

 

[Red]

Don't persecute yourself. I'd hardly say your project falls under the purview of this notion. You have had it online for five years and have reset once? And that reset is what the players supported. I am referring to those that have been online for less than a few months and have had more than half a dozen resets during their lifetime for personal gain, along with reports of corruption, etc. The owners of which call themselves "developer" but do no more developing than a thief does giving. Let's not turn this into something it's not.

I'm glad that you understand that, but let's pretend a new moderator comes across my case and is much less familiar with me and my server. It's unlikely for a newer moderator to consider that my server has been around longer than they've heard of "Tibia." Again, I understand the type of "developers" you're trying to get rid of; what I'm playing devil's advocate for is that there is no proper nor systematic way to go about this.

Again, I disagree that they are subjective. There are threads with dozens of posts from players reporting corruption, greed, manipulation; you name it. This is hardly a subjective matter. As a matter of fact, I've reported at least one in the past week of which I was hoping a moderator would look into, but I was told there's no rule to enforce in regards to exploitation for personal gain. This is what triggered my response to open a thread in the public feedback section, as opposed to keeping the discussion "in house" among friends.

Unfortunately, as compelling as the feedback sounds, AND however true the feedback may be in reality, I must implore that you consider the situation from an uninformed moderator:
Objective, by definition, is stated as:

1. (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.

Determining the outcome of a case based on reports and the contents of reports is purely subjective when it cannot be referenced to a list of rules. The unfortunate part of your post is that there are no objective guidelines to be enforceable without being subjective.)

The situation could easily be resolved through other means. My suggestion above was merely one example of how to approach this issue. I'd be more than happy to share a few more, if the staff would be interested in hearing. The whole point is to open discussion and begin brainstorming together, as no single person can accomplish this on their own. Not even Talaturen. My past experience dealing with this matter privately has taught me that hardly anyone cares*, and my hope is that the community will support such a movement.

I've even spoken with you about this in private before. Surely you remember. Even then, you've always shot me down or disagreed with the idea. It is difficult for me to understand why everyone must negate, critique, or tear down my ideas as opposed to suggesting a mix of their own, or expanding off what has already been suggested. What I've come to learn is that, if it's important enough to you, you'll find a way. If not, you'll find an excuse. And quite frankly, my experience has proven that very few of the staff members of this community feel it is important enough to act.

There's not much more to say beyond this. It's time to act. Let's work together and figure this out.

It's not that I am in disagreement with what you've stated. Actually, I agreed that something needs to be done; unfortunately, I've realized, that there is nothing that can be done (within the scope of my knowledge.)

A flourishing Open Tibia community (as well as a flourishing Tibia community, as backward as it may sound) is a (okay, I'll say it) we dream of mine. I grew up on this game, I love this game; I want this game to last as long as it brings me some inkling of enjoyment.

I agree with your ideals, I just don't think that they can be "fixed" with your current solutions. In fact, I don't think any "solutions" made by us can fix these problems. Our path and fate has and almost always certainly will be predicated on CipSoft's path.

Do I agree with most your points? - Yes. (Although I feel you made it to believe I did not.)
Does something need to change in order for us to thrive? - Yes, but I believe a lot of it depends on what CipSoft does; and yes, they have a long road ahead of them if they plan to fix it.

What you're essentially saying is that something needs to change. The difference is that you're saying it's Open Tibia administrative and what I'm saying is it's Tibia-based and Tibia-community based.

Red

 

[J.Dre]

I'm glad that you understand that, but let's pretend a new moderator comes across my case and is much less familiar with me and my server. It's unlikely for a newer moderator to consider that my server has been around longer than they've heard of "Tibia." Again, I understand the type of "developers" you're trying to get rid of; what I'm playing devil's advocate for is that there is no proper nor systematic way to go about this.

Unfortunately, as compelling as the feedback sounds, AND however true the feedback may be in reality, I must implore that you consider the situation from an uninformed moderator:
Objective, by definition, is stated as:

1. (of a person or their judgment) not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts.

Determining the outcome of a case based on reports and the contents of reports is purely subjective when it cannot be referenced to a list of rules. The unfortunate part of your post is that there are no objective guidelines to be enforceable without being subjective.)

It's not that I am in disagreement with what you've stated. Actually, I agreed that something needs to be done; unfortunately, I've realized, that there is nothing that can be done (within the scope of my knowledge.)

A flourishing Open Tibia community (as well as a flourishing Tibia community, as backward as it may sound) is a (okay, I'll say it) we dream of mine. I grew up on this game, I love this game; I want this game to last as long as it brings me some inkling of enjoyment.

I agree with your ideals, I just don't think that they can be "fixed" with your current solutions. In fact, I don't think any "solutions" made by us can fix these problems. Our path and fate has and almost always certainly will be predicated on CipSoft's path.

Do I agree with most your points? - Yes. (Although I feel you made it to believe I did not.)
Does something need to change in order for us to thrive? - Yes, but I believe a lot of it depends on what CipSoft does; and yes, they have a long road ahead of them if they plan to fix it.

What you're essentially saying is that something needs to change. The difference is that you're saying it's Open Tibia administrative and what I'm saying is it's Tibia-based and Tibia-community based.

Red

First of all, I would like to make clear that my "suggestion" is NOT a solution, nor was it ever meant to be one. This suggestion is a step in a process that leads to a greater resolve which in itself is a suggestion. Please understand that this cannot be solved with the notion of, "the problem is X and the solution is Y." That's too simplistic of a view in the grand scheme of things.

And in regards to the uninformed moderators making mistakes about which server or project owner falls under the category of corruption, exploitation of kids for personal gain, etc. - in response to my suggestion, which again, I don't see as a solution but merely a step in a process leading to a greater solution - is something of which I find to be a weak and absurd argument against brainstorming ideas on how to save Open Tibia. You could easily eliminate this issue by simply hiring or assigning senior moderators to those specified sections. It's almost as if you are just making stuff up and "nit-picking" at everything that can go wrong as opposed to seeing what could go right, and don't really appreciate the gravity of this situation. If moderators are unable to read through posts of an advertisement thread and make a judgement call, then they should not be moderators in the first place. I'm sure you can agree with that.

Finally, I would like to address your concern about Tibia being the sole cause of this issue: It is true that Tibia has in fact been acting completely as a business without regard for its community and the survival of the community, as of late. But Tibia is a business after all. It's a profit-seeking entity with legal grounds to do so. Open Tibia is an Open Source community that thrives on creativity and innovative minds. We do not flourish on profits, nor have we ever flourished on such "pettiness," so to speak. Members like @Shadowsong, @Chris, @Ninja, @Cykotitan, @Limos, @Evil Hero, both you and I, and dozens of others, have given years of their life in support of Open Tibia and share a common vision. Open Tibia has much more potential than Tibia ever will, and it's more prevalent now than it has ever been before. Open Tibia is more malleable than you think, and it's waiting for someone to hammer it into shape. We just have to take the first step.

I mean no offense by this, but you seem to make excuses for most things, as if you see this as an entirely hopeless effort. And if you see it this way, that's perfectly fine. I can understand why. But maybe there's no place for you in this discussion (at this time) as you only see what can go wrong? Talaturen and other senior administrators of this forum have much more influence than you give them credit for. If they were to act on this change - doing anything, not only what I've suggested - people would listen and they would follow. They just need a leader to get behind.

Let's not focus on what can go wrong, and let's begin to focus on what can go right. Together, we can clean up OtLand.

P.S. I'll be in class for the next few hours and may not respond quickly to any replies. My apologies in advance.

 

[Xikini]

I think I should voice my general concern as I've been semi-following this thread since it's creation.
Inside this thread we have everyone doing the same thing as what goes on through-out most of OtLand.
The thread was made to discuss possible solutions and/or enlighten on current problems, however, as with most discussions, there is simply opinions of nothing being writtenly (<- LOL verbally but written.) retorted back and forth and no discussion has been made at all.

If this discussion should continue I think the best course of action is to shed light on the current problems.
Once we have a fairly sizable list of problems.. possible solutions can then be made to fix/handle the issues we currently face.

Step 1: Identify as many issues as possible.
Step 2: Discuss/explain why it is an issue.
Step 3: Brainstorm possible solutions.
Step 4: Implement possible solutions.
Step 5: Monitor possible solutions to ensure they are working.
If not working, go back to step 1, finding the true cause of the issue(s), and continue forward.

Note: If you don't find as many issues as possible in Step 1, then you cannot fix any of the issues.
Throwing a blanket over your overflowing trash bin masks the issue, however will ultimately cause more work later on.

Cheers,

Xikini

 

[J.Dre]

Yeah, I don't like going back and forth in a debate. We need to collectively identify and resolve the issues at hand.