New Server Interest?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by marthos, May 13, 2020.

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  1. marthos

    marthos Avatar

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    I've seen a trend that games are starting offer multiple server options to their players nowadays. Everything from in-development games like Crowfall, to the very first graphical MMO Meridian59. There are different servers with different rulesets to cater to different play styles. I'm wondering if something like this could be tried out with Shroud, kind of a reboot, to see if it can pull in more players.

    I'd like to suggest a brand new Shroud server, that better reflects the old UO days. There would be a few changes, but not a whole lot in order to keep development complexity down.

    1) Only accessible to those who buy a $10-20/month special pledge
    2) No store purchases whatsoever, everything must be crafted or purchased from NPCs
    3) No COTO drops or COTO vendors, everything is purchased with gold
    4) Hard cap on total adventurer and crafting skills

    Optional to make crafting more in demand
    5) Higher item wear and tear (and with no COTOs, no way to reset wear and tear)

    This would appeal to me and many members of my guild, since your in-game wealth would reflect how much time and effort you put into playing the game. The hard cap on skills would address the infinite power creep on the main server and encourage more group play. Higher wear and tear would take items out of the economy faster, creating more demand for crafted gear, and a better economy. Plus there's a breath of fresh air starting from a clean slate.

    Since this would be an optional subscription add-on, it would bring in more money for Catnip to spend on improving the game.

    Would you sign up for such a server?
     
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  2. Xee

    Xee Bug Hunter

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    It was stated before there would be no other server. It was requested before as an option.
     
  3. Bedawyn

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    I'd go for the skill cap and higher wear and tear, and as you mentioned in the other thread, regional economies. But losing store-bought deco would be a big drawback, unless you wanted to make them gold-buyable too. But it doesn't matter whether I'd play it or not, because making it subscription only would put it out of my reach.

    And no, I don't think it likely to happen. Not because they said before that they wouldn't, because they've changed their minds on other things, but because these days they seem set on the target market of group-content players who only want games and scenes that are popular, who rate the quality of a scene by how many people are in it at the same time, and splitting the server population would run contrary to that.
     
  4. Lathiari

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    I agree with you on the skill cap. The game currently with its near infinite power scaling just makes it a nightmare to balance/develop content for.. stuff is either steam rolled or can't be completed by the majority of the player base. It's weird coming from something like Ultima Online where you had a hard cap on things and had to commit to choices.. I think this has been a problem with this game for a long time. I don't think a second server is the answer as the player base is already too small and splintering it further would be a bad move.
     
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  5. crummel

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    It is not just "one server", it probably is quite a few, like a database server, several servers for the world, etc., and running those costs gold money. Not sure if such a small company can afford that.
     
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  6. macnlos

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    Another server... 2 on 1 server, 3 on the other... :)
     
  7. OzzyOsbourne

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    No.
    Why would anyone care about a new version* of hard caps (*because we already have hard caps) if they dont pvp?
     
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  8. Restless

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    The game already has alot of bugs and not enough devs. Let’s see if they can get the first working correctly before talking about another. I mean, even the maps haven’t been working in a very long time.
     
  9. Boris Mondragon

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    To the OP; I disagree on several points but mainly on the increased wear and tear on gear and skill caps.

    If a player enjoys taking a skill to 200 which at the moment is a pipe dream then have at it. The juice atm is not worth the squeeze IMHO.

    If you want to get the excess gear out of circulation then come up with an adjustable formula where the crafters can get approximately 50 to 70 pct back on their mats/effort from selling the “junk” to NPC vendors.

    Do you want something a bit more exclusive? Give a subscription added option to hire an extra dev if necessary to hold weekly events both PVE and PVP. Those who subscribe for that extra added bit of entertainment can help defray the cost of that extra dev added to the team with that specific purpose.

    “Steps off the soapbox”.

    R/Boris/El Pirata
     
  10. CICI

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    Nope! We don't need a 2nd server...
     
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  11. Violet Ronso

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    I would rather see something like BOD's... Honestly this game needs crafter quests, and this would be the perfect place to put recipees, new T3 components, nice rewards, and a good material/junk item sink. Giving 50/70% of the mats back means every 2 item or so you can have an extra attempt. This won't necessarily fix the abundance of items, it will infact generate even more good items while filtering out the bad, which means all the crap crafters are holding on incase something happens will go back into their vendors, but the actual items on vendors right now will increase and make for an even bigger flood of items.

    Crafter's quests is the solution for this!

    As for the OP, the server is already so small, and working on all those tweaks to make a second server would mean less time invested in this server. What you are suggesting is to split this very small player base, and split this very small dev team, meaning instead of getting 1 very unfinished product that had so much trouble getting back on track, we would have 2 terribly unfinished products that would lead to the games death for sure. People (myself included) are upset by the lack of bug fixes and finished content, having a second server with different rules would mean more bugs, and less time spent working towards finished products...

    No from me, 100%
     
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  12. Boris Mondragon

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    Violet; My intent on the higher resale on crafted goods is twofold in scope.

    If a crafter can get a decent return for those flawed items, he/she can not only buy more mats to make better gear especially those items ordered. Allow for more special order items where they can make their good profits and also impact positively the gatherer market to supply needed mats. In short it gives a stimulus to craft and gather simultaneously. I have seen too much flawed gear over a year old on vendors from high end crafters that only get garbage returns from selling to npc vendors or scrapping them for an insulting return as we have presently.

    R/Boris
     
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  13. GMDavros

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    Why make it exclusive? I'm quite positive that with proper planning and vetting Catnip can build an extended team from the player base to execute planned and unplanned events. With part of someone like Elgarion's time to oversee the delivery and quality of the "event staff" we could get immediate depth and experience for minimum cash outlay and effort. If properly thought out and managed, this leave developers to develop/fix the broader issues while pumping desperately needed engagement and involvement.

    Fenris
     
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  14. Xiones

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    I fell out of my chair laughing. How can you have another server when they can't even fix the bugs from 4 years ago.
     
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  15. Girlsname

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    If they did what OSI did and released everything public, so people could run their own player run shards, that’d be fun for multiple reasons I cannot say on the forums for being deemed trollish. :)
     
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  16. Helverian

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    100 agree. Other MMOs with more servers has more players or a much smaller world. We will be split the small community in 2 much smaller ones...
     
  17. eli

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    Hahaha ok im listening, what is the hard cap?
     
  18. Violet Ronso

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    200,

    the issue is, if I take the CHEAPEST skills, like Gust (0.5 experience ratio), and Someone still manages 8m exp/hour right now (is it possible? haven't been to CP's since double exp is off), it would still take them 43 days an a half of NONSTOP playing, LITTERALY NONSTOP, 24/7, during those 43 days and a half!

    Now lets take some of those cheating pricks that bot at control points, they might be spending 12-16 hours there, doubt they manage to have a tank 24/7, so I will put it at 12hours a day, they still need 87 days to get GUST to 200, but it is possible. some people must already have more than 8b experience in their pool (not many, but I do think some do).
     
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  19. Barugon

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    It's 200 for skills (170 for AL and PL). Good luck getting any still to that thought. A normal 1x skill would take more that 16 billion XP.
     
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  20. marthos

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    That's kinda where I was going with the question.

    The game, as is, simply doesn't attract much of a player base. Any fundamental changes to the game that could drive off the few remaining players would be a big hit to Catnip's revenue. So the game has pretty much stagnated.

    If they licensed the game out to others (or went Open Source), the game experience could be tailored to try to capture more players. Or try to recapture the 60k players who pre-ordered the game. Any fundamental change that scares the current group of players could be experienced on those other shards, and some might make it into the "official" server if they aren't as scary as assumed. You would also have a community working on bug fixes that could also be promoted to the main server.
     
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