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[Sweden] - Project XDC - 8.6 (Closed)

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There would have been tutorials on the website had it made it out of beta, for beta it was much easier to allow people to use the in-game account manager since the website was not finished. This is another one of those things that comes down to me trying to do the server by myself and its just not possible to do everything at once. As for tutors, I watched help chat every day and the majority of the tutors helped when questions were asked. Just because they did not run around and ask people how their day has been does not mean they didn't do their job. If people have a question and they cannot ask in help chat then I really don't know what to say. Maybe I should have used the OT Client and made a huge blinking button in the top that says "HELP ME" and when pressed it would open a pm with every tutor... honestly at this point I am out of ideas to help the ignorant and unwilling. If I ever log into a new game and get stuck/have a question the first thing I do is open up a public help chat, it almost seems like common sense. On OT however, the thing people feel they need to do is talk to a GM immediately. This could be due to many reasons which I am not going to waste your time with but the point is, there was more than enough information in the game to help players start, when you actually step back and look at the server its still fundamentally the same as any other tibia server. You log in, explore the map, kill monsters, level up. The rest of the information sorta follows with that automatically. If you explore the map you will find the dungeons, then you will be like wow look at this place I found it says I should have a team lets go ask people to help! I understand that the artisan skills were a bit tricky to learn such as which rocks to mine and such, however I did put a pick on top of a mining rock so people can get that visual reference. Killing monsters will yield items and every time you loot the item it has different stats that improve your character, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what item is better than another... I guess what I am trying to say is, I didn't go off and change the core basics of tibia, you still cast spells the same, you still walk the same, and you still interact with with world the same.

I may or may not be ignorant in saying this but people who may have quit due to the lack of tutorials are the people that were not expecting to play a custom RPG server to begin with. It just so happens that is the majority of the players. People expect a similar to tibia look-alike with a different map or a teleport server, most people do not want to explore which is the basic concept of an open world RPG. So many players asked me "where are the teleports" or "where to hunt" and the amount of new players that asked me questions that were answered in the Newcomer Dave tutorial was just mind boggling. To think that people actually log into a server labeled as RPG, try to skip any sort of learning process, refuse to ask questions in a public channel, refuse to explore the custom map, and then skip the first npc they see named "Newcomer Dave" an npc with an obvious yellow box around is that just screams "IM IMPORTANT" and once you look at the npc it even says "You see someone you should talk to if you are new.". I think this server was a mistake, it was too much for the community that plays open tibia. I truly feel that even a 100% complete wiki and website with every single detail including the color of a bugs ass wouldn't have helped the large majority of the people that were confused and logged out within the first hour. I think the only thing that I could have done better would have been to complete a flashy website that really screamed "hey this server is custom and you will have to learn new things!" although I have looked around otservlist and there are many websites that are extremely attractive and "flashy", websites that made me feel 99% certain the servers were going to be some crazy next level thing. I log in and its a simple real map. So even a flashy website seems like a stretch at this point.
 
The server isnt hard at all.... even when i first started it wasnt hard to learn that 'rich mineral deposits' is where im suppose to mine. I really wish you give us jungle just for the ones remaining here. I really beg of you to just do that ;p.
You probably wont but if u can find any time for it do that for us please.
 
To log on and see this:
1 player online:

Skytten
Is reely sad on an great ot like this :/
 
5 players online:

Alerion
Detox
Legolas
Red Haired Shanks
Skytten

THERES NEW PPL
 
There was like 8-10 then the past few days its been me and red/embrace lol.

And It wasn't a mistake, Ive spent a lot of time on this ot, as im sure a lot of others have, but you are right most of the community just wants a tp map idk why but they do. I really hate this didnt turn out like it should have. Tbh thou its usually the older tibia players that like the rpg style servers/lower exp And theres not many of them anymore lol. I remember when real tibia had waiting list to get on the server and like over 100 worlds to play on and now theres like 25 or so and theres like 21k on at the moment. i remember having at least 300k. Theres just so many other games out now thats causes tibia to lose a lot of population. Just some opinions.
Looking forward to playing madness with you guys meantime im just gonna focus on my schooling/work if you need me feel free to msg me. Take care.
Tjay(Saint Evil)
 
@Xagul
(Long. Boring. Pointless. Here is the TL;DR summary: Xagul is so aewsum! He mah bfff in anuthr lyf. Fo sho! Yo all ned 2 bak of n gif him ruum 2 breaf.)

Xagul said:
There would have been tutorials on the website had it made it out of beta, for beta it was much easier to allow people to use the in-game account manager since the website was not finished.
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This is your first fatal flaw. You had a server in "development" status for a year and then get sad when people quit when there isn't any guarantee that their progress won't be reset. People playing for months on end and expecting to keep their characters isn't generally what a beta is about. You play, test everything, find the bugs, then leave your character and wait for the beta to close and the live production to open where everyone can join and start fresh/no bugs. Quite a few of the players I spoke to were not interested in really getting high level because they thought the server would leave beta any day now and then they'd have to start fresh. After waiting for that for a while they just quit because it gets boring not knowing if there is a future or not. You don't see this because you know where the server is going and what will happen to it. The players don't. There is even a disclaimer when they log on that reporting bugs will determine if the server resets or not. I definitely wouldn't put all my money into a stock that may leave the market or flop, but you cannot see it from this point of view obviously.

Xagul said:
If people have a question and they cannot ask in help chat then I really don't know what to say. Maybe I should have used the OT Client and made a huge blinking button in the top that says "HELP ME" and when pressed it would open a pm with every tutor... honestly at this point I am out of ideas to help the ignorant and unwilling.
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You are oblivious. It isn't that they couldn't and didn't ask for help, it was that the majority of the time they didn't know what they needed help with. If I just logged on the server I would go looking for monsters to kill. Yay, I can do that. Would I know there is anything else to the server besides monsters to kill and some weird random stat equipment? Probably not. Now how am I supposed to ask for help with artisan skills when I don't even know they exist? Become a psychic and read all the other player's minds to figure out how this server works? Hell, I know 9/10 of the players, even the more accustomed players, don't have the slightest clue about soul link even though it has been on the server for quite a long time. I'm sure people should ask about it when they don't even know it exists though; those damn ignorant players not knowing how to ask simple questions.

Xagul said:
I understand that the artisan skills were a bit tricky to learn such as which rocks to mine and such, however I did put a pick on top of a mining rock so people can get that visual reference.
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You did this pretty late on after the majority of people had tried the server and already quit. Even still, just because you see pretty decorations behind the counter of an NPC doesn't mean it really has anything to do with the process. You also have a furnace and lava thing. Yes, it does help, but no it is not always self-explanatory, especially if you've seen a hundred other OTs have weird random decoration around the NPCs.

Xagul said:
I may or may not be ignorant in saying this but people who may have quit due to the lack of tutorials are the people that were not expecting to play a custom RPG server to begin with.
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Xagul. Let me be perfectly honest with you for a second. The only reason a LARGE amount of the people who tried/played this server did so was because of you. Custom RPG servers come by the dozen and the majority are crappy and lackluster which turn off people from even trying them. Nearly everyone I have ever chatted with on the server knows you and played the Madness servers. You are taking high exp players and putting them into a mid-exp RPG setting and expecting this to be their cup of tea? Granted, a lot of people started loving this server, but an even larger amount of people got bored and quit quick because they wanted something stupidly simple and mindless like the Madness servers. I think if you stick with it (and lose the beta tag) you may attract more true RPGer types, but right now they are scared of the tag and the ones who aren't scared just want to be in one of your servers. It is kind of like a compliment and a kick to the face, all at the same time.

Xagul said:
then skip the first npc they see named "Newcomer Dave" an npc with an obvious yellow box around is that just screams "IM IMPORTANT" and once you look at the npc it even says "You see someone you should talk to if you are new."
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Well, actually a lot of people told me that they thought that Newcomer Dave was a player killer because when they asked what the box around players meant they were told someone who had a bounty for killing people. You kind of switched up the box's meaning too many times; after I took the time to tell people that it meant someone they could trust (tutor/staff) and then told them to stay away from that person (bounty/PKer) and then finally that they REALLY should talk to that person. It was a minor oversight on your part in my opinion.

Xagul said:
I think this server was a mistake, it was too much for the community that plays open tibia. I truly feel that even a 100% complete wiki and website with every single detail including the color of a bugs ass wouldn't have helped the large majority of the people that were confused and logged out within the first hour.
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Actually, I started playing another server that has a lot of confusing as hell stuff but them having a website with guides actually is the only reason I stayed after there was no one around to help me understand. It wasn't even in English and it looked like something a 3rd grader did, but just having a library to tell me what a pick does and where I could use it made things infinitely more easier to understand and pick up how to play. Yes, I know some people would be idiots and not care to do that, but if you players/staff could at least point people who truly want to learn to a basic guide it would of been a lifesaver for both the new player (they can look around more if they want) and the other players/staff (they will not give up after explaining the server for the 67th time... just a random number.)



​
FINAL THOUGHTS:
Xagul. I am not trying to insult you or point the finger at your or even saying anything you did was wrong. You were doing it on your own, you had a hell of a lot on your plate for such an advanced and unique server. You have my utmost respect and I know I would have of said "f--k it all" and quit a LOOOOONG time ago if I were in your shoes.

You weren't wrong, I just really want to help you see things how I saw them, no need to get upset or defensive. It is constructive criticism, I think you had too much on your plate during this project and there are things you should address before you bring this back for a 100% live version. I know for a fact this server has the potential to be a success, I have so much faith in this server that I'd even offer to buy it from you for modest amount if you were ever to sell it.

I think you should just let it do whatever it's going to do, focus on your Madness 3 project, then when you feel that is stable and can survive on its own (which isn't hard for Madness) then you should come back and work on a few things here in your spare time. Don't push yourself. Say "f--k you" to anyone who wants things faster. Shut it down if you need to take away the expectations for a while. You are an incredible host with an incredible talent, I think this server is a prime example of that and just didn't reach its potential for overall dumb reasons. We all will fall sometimes, it is only when we get back up that people get to see just how strong and badass we are! :)
 
so i've never kept up-to-date with this thread (only read first post), but i've been waiting quite some time for that (OPEN BETA) tag to disappear. now servs offline before it was even on, do you know how many people never logged on cuz it was a 'beta'? for a smart guy wat an idiotic move =P
 
Honestly I don't think the beta tag influences people very much and if it does they are morons. Ot servers come and go they are basically always beta. Only a few have ever stayed up for years while maintaining their community. Majority of servers nowadays carry the beta tag as a sort of disclaimer to people saying their could be bugs and shit could reset in a few months. It is really nothing new for a server to reset if a certain exp rate or system wasn't right and it caused imbalance.

I still think about this server a lot. People say it was complicated yet it was pretty straight forward to any gamer and if they logged in not realizing the features of the server then they must have just randomly chose an ip from the advertisements and logged in. The artisan skills you can use are on the first post of this thread and common sense of games in general points you to the right direction. When you see the Blacksmith Npc do you not go to him and ask to trade to see what he has to offer? Or after leaving temple through the portal to the depot which puts you in front of the general shopkeeper? Do you not look at npc to see what they have to offer? The server was straight forward and after a while seemed like any other. It even has the same commands as any other server one of them being the fucking !commands to tell you what commands you have. This was nothing new people are just lazy. The only other thing Xagul could of done is in the beginning make a rook area where people logged in and were forced to learn all of the artisan skills. The only thing that could of held anyone back is the lack of spells in the beginning which I think could have even made idiot proof by putting npc in the temple which started the quest branch for the magic academies.

I hate the ignorance in the OT community. There isn't any room for custom servers because everyone is a mindless drone of the real tibia map to dumb to learn anything new. I sometimes think what it would be like to have all these cool features Xagul added but instead of his map he adds his custom server onto a real tibia map. Fuck all. I'm out!
 
dream girl said:
Very long post indeed
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First of all, I am not quite sure where I came off as being defensive I was simply pointing out my observations. I truly believe that the server at its core was still tibia. Flatlander logged into the server with absolutely no inside knowledge about what he was getting into. He did just fine, the only complaint that he gave me was "I got bored because I had no direction" this is when I added achievements into the quest log to sorta push people in the direction they need to go. I feel the server was too complicated for the average tibia player in that it required effort. You said it yourself, most players are familiar with my Madness servers and they do expect mindless teleport servers.

I do have a serious concern with something you said though. I said people couldn't ask questions in help and your reply was basically "They can't ask questions about something they don't know exists". What bothers me about that is how can someone quit over the lack of knowledge about something they don't know exists?

The best example I can really give is something that happened in my life.
My mother had a dodge pickup which had the bare essentials. Years down the road she wanted to get a car because it would save money on gas. She ended up buying a Mitsubishi <insert w/e it was here>, this car had all kinds of gadgets that she had no idea existed. One day I found a button located in the glove compartment, I can't remember what it did off the top of my head but she didn't even know it was there. The fact that she did not know the button existed did not deter her from buying the car, how could it, what question could she have asked the seller? "Btw does this car have all the features that I don't know about?".

Here is my opinion on the core concepts of tibia.

Real Tibia (and in some cases real map OTs):
1. Log in
2. Walk to hunting spot
3. Level up
4. Learn new spells
5. Get better items
6. Do quests
7. Talk to other people

This Server:
1. Log in (same as real tibia)
2. Walk to hunting spot (this is a problem because its a custom map so players will have to re-explore)
3. Level up (same as real tibia, kill monster gain exp)
4. Learn new spells (this may be unclear at first, but with the help of newcomer dave you soon learn that mosnters will drop spells!)
5. Get better items (same as real tibia with the exception that items have random bonuses for your character)
6. Do quests (this is a bit different on this server because you have random daily quests and you have dungeons)
7. Talk to other people (same as real tibia)

So as I previously stated, the server is fundamentally the same as tibia. Anything not in these 2 lists is completely optional and are not required to play the game itself. In real tibia there are areas and features that you will not encounter until you have been playing for quite some time. That aspect is no different than say artisan skills on this server.

Yes this server was tagged as beta, however I don't think it changes much of anything. If you look at the server Ascalon, it was released about the same time as this server. It now has 13 players online... it is the same style of server (RPG custom map). Ascalon is not tagged as beta and has a full website. This is not the first occurance either, I remember kingdoms lasted no more than a month before its player base died off and again it was RPG, custom map, with a full website.

At this point in time I am pretty convinced that I am right in saying the OT Community is not interested in a long term low-mid rate RPG on a custom map with new shit. I would love to be wrong, and to be completely honest I would love to pick this project back up if people are interested. I have already stated in the past that I wanted to make an RPG again, Hyperdrive was by far my favorite server to develop. This of course assumes that I can find a small team to work with.


Malveko said:
I sometimes think what it would be like to have all these cool features Xagul added but instead of his map he adds his custom server onto a real tibia map.
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This is actually something I was talking to sythetic about a few days ago, I really do think putting the server on a real map would have made it a lot easier for new players. Problem is I am against real maps so...
 
Xagul said:
I do have a serious concern with something you said though. I said people couldn't ask questions in help and your reply was basically "They can't ask questions about something they don't know exists". What bothers me about that is how can someone quit over the lack of knowledge about something they don't know exists?
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It isn't that they quit over it, it is that they can't ask questions about what they don't know so they can't really form a solid opinion. Let's say the car your mother was going to buy looked like a rust bucket and didn't seem to have anything going for it, maybe even less than what is expected in a car. Would your mother really want to buy that car, even if it is the most advanced car on the market and gave you 100$ every mile you drove it? Yes, this is an exaggeration, but honestly if you don't know what the package entails there is nothing really enticing you to buy into it.

Xagul said:
Yes this server was tagged as beta, however I don't think it changes much of anything. If you look at the server Ascalon, it was released about the same time as this server. It now has 13 players online... it is the same style of server (RPG custom map). Ascalon is not tagged as beta and has a full website. This is not the first occurance either, I remember kingdoms lasted no more than a month before its player base died off and again it was RPG, custom map, with a full website.
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Ascalon is kind of a bad example. I followed that server for a little while and that wasn't a lack of interest or fans, it was more about the fact that there were serious issues that weren't taken care of for a period of time. If management were more consistent (like you have been) it would probably still have a decent size community. Even I played the entire time here expecting a wipe to happen but I wanted to learn the server so I'd have an edge over other players when that did happen. :p

Xagul said:
At this point in time I am pretty convinced that I am right in saying the OT Community is not interested in a long term low-mid rate RPG on a custom map with new shit.
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This has also pretty much become my take on the current OT community. While I know a couple people who are hardcore RPGers, they tend to hate bots. That is a whole other conversation/situation that is really redundant and we all know you can't get rid of them, but yeah. I only know very few though, RPGers kind of start dying out because creativity seems to be non-existent after seeing all these cookie cutter servers and 9/10 are real map. :(


Malveko said:
People say it was complicated yet it was pretty straight forward to any gamer and if they logged in not realizing the features of the server then they must have just randomly chose an ip from the advertisements and logged in. The artisan skills you can use are on the first post of this thread and common sense of games in general points you to the right direction. When you see the Blacksmith Npc do you not go to him and ask to trade to see what he has to offer?
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Some of us were invited by our friends (like me, I was told about it by Archlord) and had no clue there was even a page for this server (I looked for information on crazy-ots.com personally). Not everyone is familiar with this style of server or these types of features; there is no mining/foraging/forging/crafting/etc on RL tibia so it isn't like someone coming from RL tibia maps could really pick it up instantly. The NPC had things to offer, sure, that were way out of the price range of anyone new to the server. It isn't like I could create a character, log in, buy tools and learn the server. Even for those who did see the first page, the majority of the detailed information is somewhere in the 76 other pages. Respectfully the majority of the artisan skills weren't necessary to know from day 1, but it is nice to flaunt what you have, if for nothing else but to entice players to stick around and save up to try it out.
 
I understand what you were saying now that you put it like that although even with the lack of knowing all the cool new features there were still quite a few that you had no choice but to encounter such as equipment and spells. Again I come back to the car story, the car was not a rust bucket it appears to be a normal car on the surface but then deep down it had a lot of stuff to offer. The OT sorta works the same way, on the surface it looks like a standard ot server, but as you play it you start to see all the features it has to offer. I guess what I cant wrap my head around is how someone can log into a real map or a teleport server and be like "yea this server is awesome "I'm going to stick around" but not XDC. I would understand if I had released this in alpha when there were no monsters on the map and every time you tried to cast a spell your character would get kicked but the fact is the server was complete up to level 1k or so. If I disabled artisan skills, dungeons, perks, and custom equipment stats the server would look exactly like a real map except it would have a custom map and custom spells. That much is already more than most custom servers we see nowadays which have a custom map with real tibia equipment and spells.

I guess people just need to see every cool feature otherwise they get bored, and maybe it was a mistake to not open beta without a website and library. I am just used to the old ways where people log into a server with 1/1 and play. I forgot that everyone is now spoiled.

No matter what the reason for the small community be it beta tag or no website or lack of tutorials, it doesn't change the fact that there is too much to be done by myself so... If anyone is interested in working on this project in the future by all means leave me a private message, for now I will work on a project that I can manage alone.

BTW I am very excited about Madness 3, I have been working on the event system lately and I will be putting most of the old events back in however I have learned a lot working on XDC and one thing I did lean is how to manipulate players on an instance to instance basis which allowed me to create an awesome capture the flag event that auto balances teams! Of course each team will have the same amount of players but what is really cool is that you can be level 1 brand spanking new to the server and go into the event and your level and equipment will automatically be scaled up to compete with the big dogs. This concept will open the door to other PvP type events that should prove fun and exciting even for the casual players who are unable to keep up with the hardcore players.
 
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so uhmm i have a question, You still have that Newer hyperdrive server u were working on before u realeased madness 2? if not oh well lol i just kinda liked that server before it went down and looting the stat buffing shit was cool etc....
 
Im reely looking forward to madness 3!! I played ALOT on madness 2 and hope this one is getting players that stays for a long time!
And love the CTF system you wrote aboute cant wait to see it running!

Good Luck with Madness, I´ll be there on startup!
 
Malveko said:
Sons of bitches removed my petition. Forget this forum lol fkn oppressors.
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Im pretty shure ur making no progress on that, he diesided to put this project down and work on another one.
Yes its sad that it failed but i'm pretty shure he shuldnt get more players sadly :(
 
He didnt put this one down hes just working on maddess 3 , he said that after he gets madness up if he can get a team to work on xdc he was. I know he has a lot of time in this server so why would he just up and throw it out haha.
 
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