OTservers are dying faster & faster.

[Red]

After my finals I'll be writing a post (from the perspective of a long-time server owner and even longer-time server developer) regarding some of the biggest issues in Open Tibia. Some problems can definitely be addressed and other issues, unfortunately, cannot be addressed (or at least not directly) and my idea of how to alleviate some of the issues.

Red

 

[Vizzle]

What i have seen from your example is that people gets it for that moment, the humans is a really crazy creature if you ask me. This is pretty much how it works:
They ask: "Why does not this script work", someone answer: "Well you need to close that first if statement with an end". The person that asked the question do understand what the text means but doesn't bother to actually learn it since he or she already learned that he or she can keep ask that person or on that forum without spending a minute to even try to fix it themselves. I have been a little like an alone-wolf since i was little, i don't ask questions if i really, really, really don't need to or get forced. I give it days, weeks or months if i need to fix an issue. That is however not always good since it given me issues with school MANY times since its really time consuming sometimes but since my brain tells me: "You can't ask that, You will look like a total retard asking that, etc" i make sure to remember it to the next time and if i forget i can start think of the solving and it directly makes me remember how i got passed the problem. It takes a lot of time and much work but when i have wrote it down once i wont forget.

all that time that you spend trying to solve this questions by yourself and not asking actually was worth, it helped you learn it better and also it made you smarter, since you used your problem-solving skills, it improved, therefore you became smarter.
is like the theory of the child that never reads the instructions:
You give a new electronic toy to 2 children, one will first read the instructions and another one will throw away the instructions, look at the toy, find out how it works, and then play with it.
the second one will be smarter, since he is increasing his brain capacity of problem-solving.

 

[WibbenZ]

What i have seen from your example is that people gets it for that moment, the humans is a really crazy creature if you ask me. This is pretty much how it works:
They ask: "Why does not this script work", someone answer: "Well you need to close that first if statement with an end". The person that asked the question do understand what the text means but doesn't bother to actually learn it since he or she already learned that he or she can keep ask that person or on that forum without spending a minute to even try to fix it themselves. I have been a little like an alone-wolf since i was little, i don't ask questions if i really, really, really don't need to or get forced. I give it days, weeks or months if i need to fix an issue. That is however not always good since it given me issues with school MANY times since its really time consuming sometimes but since my brain tells me: "You can't ask that, You will look like a total retard asking that, etc" i make sure to remember it to the next time and if i forget i can start think of the solving and it directly makes me remember how i got passed the problem. It takes a lot of time and much work but when i have wrote it down once i wont forget.

Thats so true, today there is no challange with ots, check eg. support forum. There is only a shitload of eg. whats wrong with this script. As you said.. And just by reading the error from tfs and having to write that....

 

[Ahilphino]

It's also become harder in general to host a server. OTs used to be very user friendly back in the XML days and then it got to SQL and it got a bit harder and nowadays you usually have to compile the distro etc. I'm not saying that's it hard to get a server online but most of the new people to OTLand has almost no experience with computers. They've just played games like tibia and OTs on their computers and they know nothing about programming. So for them it can be very advanced to get a server up and running and nowadays you will almost always get some error which they won't have any clue how to solve. This could potentially make users that want to create a server give up on it and it pretty much forces them to ask the forum what they should do or try and search for it (and now it's kinda hard to get the information from searching because of every distro has different errors, there's many different webpages etc).

I think that making it easier to open up a server with a webpage would get more new users to try and create servers and eventually they would want to learn how to make scripts and how to map good. If they can't even get their server online why would they bother learning stuff? Maybe there should be an official datapack with a distro and a webpage for 8.6, 7.6, 9.8 and 10.2x and whatever distro everyone is playing that would be simple to install and without any errors.

 

[Mjmackan]

It's also become harder in general to host a server. OTs used to be very user friendly back in the XML days and then it got to SQL and it got a bit harder and nowadays you usually have to compile the distro etc. I'm not saying that's it hard to get a server online but most of the new people to OTLand has almost no experience with computers. They've just played games like tibia and OTs on their computers and they know nothing about programming. So for them it can be very advanced to get a server up and running and nowadays you will almost always get some error which they won't have any clue how to solve. This could potentially make users that want to create a server give up on it and it pretty much forces them to ask the forum what they should do or try and search for it (and now it's kinda hard to get the information from searching because of every distro has different errors, there's many different webpages etc).

I think that making it easier to open up a server with a webpage would get more new users to try and create servers and eventually they would want to learn how to make scripts and how to map good. If they can't even get their server online why would they bother learning stuff? Maybe there should be an official datapack with a distro and a webpage for 8.6, 7.6, 9.8 and 10.2x and whatever distro everyone is playing that would be simple to install and without any errors.

That's exactly how i started out as well ("I'm not saying that's it hard to get a server online but most of the new people to OTLand has almost no experience with computers."), learn by mistakes, understand why that error shows up when i delete this "param" etc. If people aren't ready to learn as how it is right now, i mean there is several tutorials, it is hard but some things you will have to fight for. Or else just give up since if you can't even spend one straight hour trying to fix an issue before posting it in Support board that tells me that the server will for 100% be just another download and run, another try to get money in some way, another copy up at OTservlist, nothing unique and definitely nothing new that this OT hoster will contribute with here at OTland to make the OT community better.
If that person is not even able to spend a couple of hours/days/weeks to learn how you host a server, what tells you that this person will spend even one hour making a unique map/system etc?

 

[Seksy]

I would so love to be able to create "custom" include a real story line, add updates, include my own functions etc.
In fact I am trying, problem is, there are too many people on here who are unwilling to help people learn.
Learning is a process you need a teacher and a student..on OTland everyone says "use search" or "go learn"

Imagine if our schools were that way, why would we need teachers?
Folks on OTland need to get a grip and become a community again. Start helping and sharing

 

[zbizu]

The person that asked the question do understand what the text means but doesn't bother to actually learn it since he or she already learned that he or she can keep ask that person or on that forum without spending a minute to even try to fix it themselves. I have been a little like an alone-wolf since i was little, i don't ask questions if i really, really, really don't need to or get forced. I give it days, weeks or months if i need to fix an issue.
(...)

I totally agree with you. I am alone wolf too, because all teams I had were useless. After joining server team nobody gave a shit about doing something even if I ordered detailed request that could be done within one day, they had three weeks of time to do it they just didn't replied later or posted shit that they forgot. After years of being in ot community I have 3 trusted friends who actually do something upon request. We are going to do one server and it's good teamwork so far - everyone puts equeal amount of work.

It's like natural selection based on problem-solving skill as Vizzle mentioned(post #22) - there is shitload of ot/lua tutorials on the internet so those who really want to learn maintaining server will find it sooner or later without posting new threads. It's weird that so many people don't ask google first, their problem is often solved already. There is also great method to find things faster, eg:

site:Otland.net getTileThingByPos problem

will show results linking only to otland.

Thats the reason people dont know how to do shit and are always asking questions... they fucking copy and paste things without doing anything or practicing....

If they are here to make money without caring about their servers they are not worth helping. Some of them don't even thank you when they get your help. Copying itself isn't bad in my opinion, as long as you learn something out of it.

@Seksy
Well... someone still have to test us and doing researches is sometimes awesome, especially when problem is unique and you manage to solve it after let's say few hours.
If your problem is simple you will likely receive "search it" reply. This is what should be done - most problems were solved already.

 

[zhatros]

All tibia have a terrible nightmare, why ? If you banned all bots in your otserver you will not have players, well i can't make sure of that but 80% use BOT in the major LVL up in your char ,they only play to PK and Quests....

So, how you can fix this ?

 

[zbizu]

What else you expect from them?
This is what this game is about.

 

[Limos]

I would so love to be able to create "custom" include a real story line, add updates, include my own functions etc.
In fact I am trying, problem is, there are too many people on here who are unwilling to help people learn.
Learning is a process you need a teacher and a student..on OTland everyone says "use search" or "go learn"

Imagine if our schools were that way, why would we need teachers?
Folks on OTland need to get a grip and become a community again. Start helping and sharing

There might be many people who are unwilling to help, but there are also many people who are willing to help.

People won't get comments with only "use search" because that has been against the rules since October 18, 2012.
Not only because people didn't get help anymore with problems that couldn't be found by searching, but also because it was making the search function useless (people who used search only found threads with "use search").

You're right about the learning part. People can learn more and faster by sharing knowlegde. It doesn't even have to be a student teacher situation.
Any person who experienced a problem before and found a solution for it can share this with people with the same problem.
Or more experienced people who ask eachother questions incase the other one might have ideas about their issue.

@The people who complain about support.
I can understand the frustration a bit. I've also made scripts for people who weren't trying to learn anything from it.
And there are many threads where people don't even bother adding any information about their problem (I often just ignore those threads since they can't even be solved without any information).
But there are enough people who do spend time trying to fix their problem and learn from the solution, and even if they don't, it can still be useful for other people.
You can see it a bit as releasing solutions. If people use search or are looking in the Support board, they might find that thread to solve their problem.

 

[Shadowsong]

Limos is right. If we give more encouragement to people, better options to work with, and share our experience with them, they will start contributing back and using their new gained experience to help themselves and hopefully others with potential problems and questions. I always try to leave my honest opinion and criticism on any thread I comment in, because I know that any kind of thorough feedback is valuable and might lead people to think about how to address some problems, rather than just "its nice" or "it sucks".

And to be honest, OP is somewhat right. I'd also like to see a functional, "awarding" reputation system. It took me quite a while to get used to this new forum when I realized there's no more of that old reputation system. The only thing I have mixed feelings about the modern OTs is the 1.0 distro.

I'm personally not using it, but I heard that it's better and more stable than the old ones - though it limits and reduces the flexibility of OTs created on it? If so, this could both be a potential reason for this downfall of activity, but also a reason for activity to bloom again.

I would so love to be able to create "custom" include a real story line, add updates, include my own functions etc.
In fact I am trying, problem is, there are too many people on here who are unwilling to help people learn.
Learning is a process you need a teacher and a student..on OTland everyone says "use search" or "go learn"

Imagine if our schools were that way, why would we need teachers?
Folks on OTland need to get a grip and become a community again. Start helping and sharing

Maybe you should personally ask some experienced users via PM to spare a bit of their time and help you by explaining some things, I'm sure there are still generous people around, but most of them are just lurking and rarely posting. Don't give up because you feel there's a lack of support, you just have to search in the right places. The internet is vast, there is always someone who will help you, or something you will read that will help you, even if it's not directly on OTland.

 

[Vizzle]

kids want money nowadays, before [we] kids, wanted to have some fun, and by having fun we were learning, thats why we don't understand why those new kids doesn't want to learn.
until we don't start understanding this we won't be able to save OTs.
Great.

 

[zbizu]

kids want money nowadays, before [we] kids, wanted to have some fun, and by having fun we were learning, thats why we don't understand why those new kids doesn't want to learn.
until we don't start understanding this we won't be able to save OTs.
Great.

Not really. We are still there. We just have to show them that if they want to make profit on otservers they're gonna have a bad time and if they want to do good ot they have to learn
To be honest I'm too lazy to write entire scripts upon request(unless I find them interesting). I usually give them most important piece of script as a "fishing rod" instead of "fish" to make them learn and then, I help them few times more. If I see that they don't want to learn and keep begging me for help I just block them.

 

[Limos]

Maybe you should personally ask some experienced users via PM to spare a bit of their time and help you by explaining some things, I'm sure there are still generous people around, but most of them are just lurking and rarely posting. Don't give up because you feel there's a lack of support, you just have to search in the right places. The internet is vast, there is always someone who will help you, or something you will read that will help you, even if it's not directly on OTland.

People can just ask for support in the Support board
I personaly also prefer this instead of people sending me pms. I've had times where people sent me over 30 pms in a day, well that's just to much. There was just no way I would have time to answer them all.
If people post a thread in the Support board, everyone can help with it.
Ofc people can still always pm me. There are several people who pm me almost every day for help with scripts they are working on and I like to help with it.
But to avoid people getting to much pms or don't have time to answer them, it's also good to just post threads in Support, so other people can also help with it and it can also be that there are other people who know more about a certain problem.
And if it's a problem more people have, it can also be useful to them if they see/find the thead.

 

[Shadowsong]

People can just ask for support in the Support board
I personaly also prefer this instead of people sending me pms. I've had times where people sent me over 30 pms in a day, well that's just to much. There was just no way I would have time to answer them all.
If people post a thread in the Support board, everyone can help with it.
Ofc people can still always pm me. There are several people who pm me almost every day for help with scripts they are working on and I like to help with it.
But to avoid people getting to much pms or don't have time to answer them, it's also good to just post threads in Support, so other people can also help with it and it can also be that there are other people who know more about a certain problem.
And if it's a problem more people have, it can also be useful to them if they see/find the thead.

Oh... Well I've never experienced such a spam so I thought those things don't really happen that much, but in that case, yeah... support board it is!

 

[rsdsebek]

I think open-source community was created to share knowledge - but knowledge, that is already shared doesn't need to be shared again. People come to OTLand mostly to get free help, e.g. lua script, then they copy/paste, and nothing comes up from that - just the fact, that their script works. Personally sometimes I help people in Support, but I can honestly say, that 90% of problems in Support, even for complete begginers, are frightfully easy to solve (10 minutes in google) - why should I do something, because of someone's laziness? If I see, that someone asks a logical question, that isn't just simple question about missing arguments in damn lua function, I simply reply to it, if I can help. Problem in OTland community, is that nowadays people want to get scripts for free and they don't give a shit what happens afterwards. Personally I don't share my codes, because firstly I don't think, that this codes could have any use for normal Tibia OTServers, secondly I think that people will just copy/paste my code, and give nothing in return to the community - it's what pisses me out most of all. I'm one of alone wolves, like some people that replied in this thread earlier and all I did to learn how to code/script in OpenTibia was just searching on OTLand/OTFans and Google, though I'm in OTservers for about 8 years (Darkonia 7.1 FTW ). I don't think that it's that hard to sacrifice 10 minutes on searching to solve a problem, instead of asking on Support and waiting for the reply 2 days.

The only thing I have mixed feelings about the modern OTs is the 1.0 distro.

I'm personally not using it, but I heard that it's better and more stable than the old ones - though it limits and reduces the flexibility of OTs created on it? If so, this could both be a potential reason for this downfall of activity, but also a reason for activity to bloom again.

Like you, I had mixed feelings about TFS 1.0, but once you get used to it, it becomes the best distro of all the time. I find it highly customizable, not to mention quality and clearness of code. And of course its stability is far better then pre-1.0 distro's. I moved from "hoary" 0.3.6pl1 for 8.54 protocol and I can honestly say, that I'm not disappointed. On migration from 0.3.6pl1 (about 40 large custom codes in source + getting TFS 1.0 to work with 9.81 protocol, not to mention transfer of all items in Tibia.dat/spr/items.otb [but that's another kettle of fish ]) I spent about 3 days. But my server is still in development I must say, that @Mark made excellent work!

Best
Sebastian

 

[Animera]

Like i said before "Feed them knowledge not scripts".
Do not support download and run servers on otlists..

This will get rid of the hobo's and lazyasses
"Donations are fine, if you have spend quality in that time".

 

[Matti96]

What i have seen from your example is that people gets it for that moment, the humans is a really crazy creature if you ask me. This is pretty much how it works:
They ask: "Why does not this script work", someone answer: "Well you need to close that first if statement with an end". The person that asked the question do understand what the text means but doesn't bother to actually learn it since he or she already learned that he or she can keep ask that person or on that forum without spending a minute to even try to fix it themselves. I have been a little like an alone-wolf since i was little, i don't ask questions if i really, really, really don't need to or get forced. I give it days, weeks or months if i need to fix an issue. That is however not always good since it given me issues with school MANY times since its really time consuming sometimes but since my brain tells me: "You can't ask that, You will look like a total retard asking that, etc" i make sure to remember it to the next time and if i forget i can start think of the solving and it directly makes me remember how i got passed the problem. It takes a lot of time and much work but when i have wrote it down once i wont forget.

Thats the way how I am and it ended up in heavy depressions and being suicidal :O

@Topic I've been playing Tibia since I was like 11 yrs old... I couldn't even speak english at all. Well for me it wasn't about leveling back then but about the fun in the community of an OTS or Real Tibia. Everyone says "blah blah ppl get older and dont want to play tibia anymore blah blah". That's not fully the truth. The thing is they miss the oldschool OTS style Tibia used to had. All the 7.6 RPG servers and Fun servers. For me, the best time of open Tibia was 2010/2011. 2 years ago Winter 2011/2012 I hosted my first server. 7.6 RPG and it had 30 players but it got DDOSED so I closed the project. The server was up for maybe a month. A half year later I launched the exact same server again and it hadn't had even a single player. So for me Tibia died in 2012. The few years before 2012 it was like in a coma.

 

[Eldin]

Good post.

I myself and I Got alot of great ideas with balanced systems and nice functions.
My main goal is to create several different servers that people could download for free and edit.

I currently have 2 problems:
1. TIME, but thats my problem, im doing my best.
2. The community of actual players seem to want high rate real maps.
Will a custom server ever work? I hope so.

My latest idea is to make a small version of an idea I have and see if it works. Incase it works, I'll update it aslong as people want it. Otherwise I'll pass on for the next idea.

My first attempt will be to complete a nice RaceWars server, will use the real map for different reasons but focus on a new nice vocation system aswell as functions. We'll see by time if people will play.

In my mind, Its all about customize and creation, people must enjoy that.

Kind Regards,
Eldin.

 

[Vizzle]

Good post.

I myself and I Got alot of great ideas with balanced systems and nice functions.
My main goal is to create several different servers that people could download for free and edit.

I currently have 2 problems:
1. TIME, but thats my problem, im doing my best.
2. The community of actual players seem to want high rate real maps.
Will a custom server ever work? I hope so.

My latest idea is to make a small version of an idea I have and see if it works. Incase it works, I'll update it aslong as people want it. Otherwise I'll pass on for the next idea.

My first attempt will be to complete a nice RaceWars server, will use the real map for different reasons but focus on a new nice vocation system aswell as functions. We'll see by time if people will play.

In my mind, Its all about customize and creation, people must enjoy that.

Kind Regards,
Eldin.

Good post.

I myself and I Got alot of great ideas with balanced systems and nice functions.
My main goal is to create several different servers that people could download for free and edit.

I currently have 2 problems:
1. TIME, but thats my problem, im doing my best.
2. The community of actual players seem to want high rate real maps.
Will a custom server ever work? I hope so.

My latest idea is to make a small version of an idea I have and see if it works. Incase it works, I'll update it aslong as people want it. Otherwise I'll pass on for the next idea.

My first attempt will be to complete a nice RaceWars server, will use the real map for different reasons but focus on a new nice vocation system aswell as functions. We'll see by time if people will play.

In my mind, Its all about customize and creation, people must enjoy that.

Kind Regards,
Eldin.

You inspire hope.